I also know the folks who are following "the cutting novel" are either writers or aspiring writers. This is sort of how novel writing goes for some of us - six months can pass before we get organized again.
Remember I announced the beginning in December? How I had gotten the voice right and I was sort of ready? I put the novel aside for a couple of months because a nagging voice in the back of my mind just didn't buy it.
I thought the novel was shelved for good. Then, about three weeks ago, I suffered a bout of insomnia, picked up a notebook and admitted the problem: the character wasn't authentic. I was writing it too much "outside" the character - as if what she was experiencing was too icky for Anne Spollen to enter into. So I did enter it. Much more. I took a ton of notes in the early morning hours when the house was quiet. Now I'm working on a brand new beginning and piecing together parts of the older version into the manuscript.
And it's taking shape.
Finally.
Hopefully.
2 comments:
I am currently reading your novel The Shape of Water and when I saw that you are working on this one I thought: this might be a novel on the subject worth reading. It's unfortunately a subject I know a little too much about, but anyway. I just wanted to say that the way you write YA fiction both gives me hope in the genre (I'm no longer a teen, but I still read some of it if it catches my eye) and makes me think that the book I'm working on might just fit in somewhere. YA needs more unconventional stuff.
Just wanted to wish you good luck with getting it right. So far it sounds like you'll do your idea justice.
Good luck, Anne!
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