Now that the rough draft is finished

On writing

+JMJ+ Warning: this post skips around a lot because that’s how my brain is working (or not working, depends on how you look at it).

(How we look at your brain, mom? Ew!)

No, Miss Lucy Dawg, not how you look at my brain.

(Oh, good! Cuz my dawggy ears can pick up tiny sounds, but I don’t think my eyes can see things that small.)

Sigh. Let me just close this door. WHAM! Ah, silence is golden.

(So is this pond out here, mom.)

Really? Wait, we don’t have a pond in the house, Miss Lucy Dawg.

(We do now!)

😖

As I was saying, we’ll soon be back to our regular posts (and I’ll finish up work on the Rosary ebooks, about time!) now that the rough draft for the novel is finished (woohoo!). And when I say rough, I mean rough. And when I say finished, I mean just beginning. ;) I have written–no, truthfully, I have begun so so so many novels and I’ve almost always reached the word count targets (and time targets where those existed). But I cannot say that I have ever written a novel, not a real one, not one telling an actual story from beginning to end. This was an exhilarating experience and I learned more during these past few weeks than I have learned in all the years of reading about writing and making all of those false starts. My external drives are littered with stories begun and abandoned. Sigh.

This time I stayed with it all the way to the end and finished the thing, such as it is. I’m not saying it’s good. Heaven knows, it’s not good, though it may have good moments here and there. The characters are not developed and neither are most of the ideas. I’d go so far as to say that none of it is developed.

But it is a rough draft, and an exploratory one, a way of mining my imagination for what could become a novel. Maybe than one. Maybe I don’t need to cram every idea I have into one container. Maybe now that the well of my literary imagination is primed, the world of the story can open out and reveal vistas unsuspected when first I began this experiment. That has already happened. I surprised myself over and over with what I’ve already written. The principle of Exuberant Imperfection (as taught by Christ Baty, founder of National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo, in his book, No Plot? No Problem!) has stood me well lo these many years, in writing and in other pursuits as well. (My musical and watercolor explorations are cases in point. Talk about imperfection! I’ve got that down to an art.)

Celebration!

So I can’t expect a perfect rough draft from myself. That would be a miracle. But I do have a rough draft. And that calls for a celebration. I was going to celebrate on the blog when I hit the halfway mark and had not given up yet. Believe me, that was a momentous occasion. But I was so involved in the writing (and some other projects on the homefront) that it blew right past with a barely a nod from me.

Time now to rectify that. We are due another giveaway and I am currently pondering what that giveaway should be. It needs to be something I can afford, unless someone wants to sponsor it. (Ahem.) Another reason for a new giveaway is to say a great big THANK YOU to everyone who read my rough draft and stayed with me all the way to the end. God bless ya! I’m only too aware that it has problems but thank you for hanging in there with me. And if you didn’t, well, I can’t really blame you!) Stay tuned for news about our celebration and giveaway.

Back to our schedule

I have two blog post series currently, the Story of Salvation and Series On the Soul, Vol. 2, beginning with a look at yoga and its compatibility (or lack thereof) with Catholicism, an introduction to which is up so far. Re-reading the New Age won’t have any new posts for a while while I work on these others. (I went for many long years with a few ideas here and there for writing, now I have so many I can hardly keep up. I suppose that’s a good thing.)

Thanks for dropping in and reading, and commenting if you like. Until next time, I pray you’ll stay well and holy, and become what you were always meant to be: a SAINT. May the Lord bless you and may His Peace be always with you. +JMJ+

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