I missed yesterday, Gentle Reader, for various and sundry reasons. Namely, Tuesday/Thursday are my teaching days, and I had a rather full docket. But that’s just an excuse. I woke up late, another excuse. Aren’t we full of excuses when we don’t get our work done? I know I am. I don’t mean to be, but that’s the way it happens.
But now, I’m up early. The dogs are fed. This human is fed and is now enjoying her first of two cups of coffee (mmm coffee). I know what I need to do. I need to CHOP, SLASH, and BUTCHER March to get those pages down. I’ve got 50 left to go, and the MS needs to be tighter, I know that. Kill your darlings indeed. It seems like a travesty, but a necessary one.
Kill your darlings. What an odd phrase but one every writer is familiar with. What it means, of course, is that we have to Let Go ™. That’s the hardest thing to do: letting go. We love our turns of phrase, our little quirks, in my case, my character’s inner monologue is rich with poetic and literary references because she is a teacher, as well. She thinks like I think, and therein lies the problem. I am TOO CLOSE TO MARCH. Even now, lo, these many years after the MS was written and polished and shopped and rejected and dusty from disuse, I am too close to her. Not so to Becoming, but then, Becoming is in third-person. March was my first Serious Novel, and it’s in first-person. It was the first novel I tried to sell. It’s my heart.
Killing my darlings. I’m on it. What’s on your NaNoWriMo agenda today, Friends?
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The Postmodern Bluestocking 