Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Jonesing for time

I love to write. When I write, it's magical. Worries and stress slough away. In my mind I am Molly McBride, Archaeologist extraordinare. No more hum drum 8:40 to 2:55 struggle to enlighten students in an atmosphere where it feels the teachers are the only ones working, no more joint pain, weight struggle, lesson planning, exahustion, just relief. When I write, it doesn't matter if my work never gets published. What does matter is that I write.

Once I find the time to write, it's always there with me. I catch glimpses of the places Molly has been, as if true memories. I hear snippets of Molly's conversations. She whispers to me, distracting me, beckoning me to put away the marking, forget the email, and finish writing her story the way she wants it to be written.

My Twitter novel will be based on my first novel, The Guardian. Admittedly, I hate The Guardian. I have picked it up and dusted it off and discarded it in digust enough times in the past almost-decade that it feels like the manuscript mocks me. And yet picking through the bones of the story, paring it down in order to fit the length of a Tweet, is fascinating, incredibly hard, and fun. I can't wait to begin Tweeting. The month or so between now and then seems like forever.

I have begun the planning. If all goes well, I should have enough time to plan the Tweets and go back and revise, at least once. Revision: the soul-sucker of the writing process. The more I read the manuscript, the more I both loathe and love it. My only hope is that people begin to follow me and then I can use that as a selling point for publishing Phase Shift, the next novel.

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