Revisin’

Another, complete world exist in my computer now, right there in the file behind this one.  I don’t know how to describe it or explain it to people, not the book itself nor my process of working on it.  When friends ask if the draft needs big changes or if I’m working line by line, I feel the novel world suck me out of the now toward rainy plains and a silent window and the blue glow of night glass.  Depths, colors, and currents swirl there.  People are leaving my story—gone.  Others are coming forward, uncertain.  Hints my subconscious once dropped into the novel now reveal themselves in a pattern.  Others don’t.  Eliminating one scene means motivation for an action 50 pages later no longer makes sense.  Fixing the pace in one place means dropping out a plot thread that guts character development.  One perceptive observation from my editor in the margin of page 60 ricochets through my choices all around the first half of the novel and unmoors them all.  If you’re looking for me, that’s where I’ll be.