this woman’s work

Now it’s not the ending

Jan 30, 2006 Writing

Now the part I’m working on is just before the ending. J read it last night and gave it her stamp of approval. It made her cry, she said it was beautiful, it opened up a nice small discussion. I have two market ideas for it and if they say no I’ll need to drum up more.

I’ve learned a lot (so far) in writing this and am already looking forward to whatever I end up writing next because I want to learn more.

I realized a big problem I have is always revising and not rewriting. I’ll keep pieces I like and transfer it to a new document then try to build on them but things turn out better when I jettison everything and start over. I don’t know how many versions of this (totally different versions) I started but it was a lot. I started every session with a free-write and then when I unlocked something new I would let myself start writing in earnest. When I got stuck, I’d freewrite again or call it a day (depending on how much work I’d done). I also read a lot of essays that seemed to do what I wanted to do and then tried on ways of starting or finishing or structure ideas. None of them stuck but they helped me come at in a way I might not have tried and that gave me a fresh perspective with its accompanying inspiration.

I say all this like I’m done. I’m not done.

Thank god J liked it. It would have been very hard if she took issue with anything I said both writing-wise and family-wise.

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