Heaving Lifting

My revision plans have been sort of on and off. Returning home has, of course, made things different than they were when I was chilling in Martha's Vineyard. Also, I have a house guest I hadn't counted on, and then there is just the siren song of NYC. It has been hard to focus, but I have make a little progress.

I have learned that I don't know how to work with other people around me. I am so used to living alone. Also, as a southern girl, I was raised to me extremely polite to house guests, so I have been tipping around, not wanting to wake him up, etc. As a result, I am going to set up shop in the public library and work there until my friend can get to his own place.

But that's not the point of this entry.

I am reading through the manuscript, trying to get the draft nice enough to give to my reading committee. Chapter Six is a mess. For many reasons.

For one thing, I wrote it when I was feeling very hurt about the way I have been treated by some people in my family and I can see that hurt all over it. I don't know if I was trying to use the work as a way to illustrate how poorly I had been treated, but it doesn't really work for this story. Injecting a crazy autobiographical scene is not artful. Particularly, since the character is nothing like me, so it doesn't make sense that for about five pages, she is walking around in my life.

The other thing is that I seem to have organized the entire chapter around one character, Brucetta. Well, it makes the chapter too one-note. In addition, I am bouncing around in time like a montage of Brucetta-moments. Nope. Nope. Nope.

It's time for what I call "a clean paper re-write." That's when I just start the hell over. I use the chapter I have written as sort of a reference document. And to make it even thornier, I have a feeling that this long and tentacled Chapter Six is really Chapter Six and Chapter Seven. Separating the two is going to be tricky, mainly because I am not sure about the purpose or focus of Chapter Seven.

I feel so apprehensive about what I am about to do. I feel like a doctor about to separate conjoined twins. But the truth is, I am more like an eighth grader about to dissect a frog or something.