AFDOC 25: Second Revision

Mobile's 100+ temperatures weren't the only thing on fire this week. I got over 50 hours of revisions into AFDOC. I'm trying out a new idea I've been mulling over for months. Keeping it all in first person, I'm fooling around {a great Southern expression that says so much} with new tenses and chapter grounding ideas. I'm constantly amazed at how much freedom I'm giving myself to cut and rearrange, which hopefully means I'm on the right path to bringing this baby on home in the next six months.

A creative writing class I took some time ago - and much I've read since - strongly advises that at this critical juncture in novel revision I should be able to write four succinct statements that define the book. It took me eight pages of handwritten notes to get it done, but it's right on target I hope. Note the decisiveness in that strong statement. It's a clear outline for me to follow to make sure every scene in every chapter speaks directly to one of the four statements and should be helpful as I take the revision process one or two or a hundred steps deeper into analysis - which I may need years of when this over.

As I ponder the Deep South in the post World War II period and finalize {an hilarious word when it comes to writing} the novel, I send you wishes for a Fourth of July replete with fried chicken, potato salad, boiled corn, butter beans, sliced tomatoes, onion & cucumbers marinated in vinegar, deviled eggs, and watermelon for dessert.

Mahala

Make the most of waiting

Don’t you just love it when contractors tell you they’ll be at your home on Friday but can’t give you a time? So you wait. And wait. And wait. If you’re lucky they will appear sometime during the day. Well, as I wait my turn (I have two different contractors supposed to arrive today), I have found my silver lining . . . write something!

The good thing about that is, because I don’t know exactly when someone will ring the doorbell, I have to collect my thoughts for this column and write fast. Kind of like a ten-minute writing exercise without a prompt.

I am in the throes of editing a novel, and my marvelous critique group has taken a summer hiatus for various valid reasons but the silver lining on that bit of waiting is the time it gives me to more thoroughly develop my characters’ personalities. I tend to have them run breathlessly from one conflict to the next because I have a very hard time with narrative. It’s a learning curve I need to master.

On another note, I borrowed (from the library) an ACT study guide for essays (to help my granddaughter brush up), and there are some very good cues in there. Good enough for me to order the book for my personal library. One principle tells the student-writer that the first and last sentence of a paragraph are what the reader--in Johanna's case, the grader--remembers, and the last word can be the most important. Reminds me to remember the hook.

Okay, one contractor just called and said he was on his way, so I’ll quit for today.

You keep on keeping on, and I’ll try to do the same.

cj

Jeff Johnston’s eagle picture is called “The Chase."