double, double...

i can feel the story stewing. like a warm pot of stew on a cold winter day, it wafts through my head at unexpected times in unexpected places, surprising me and comforting me. i'm here, it whispers. i'm here, and i'm not quite yet done.

but, oh, the ideas that are burbling. i get a glimpse now and then... faces of new characters... three of them actually...new voices, new wishes, new needs. adding them into the story will not be as daunting as it might seem... it helps a lot that these three are all ghosts and secondary characters. i just need the courage now to cut and prune and paste, to gently extricate stuff that isn't working as well as it should. i need the courage to make it better.

i can do it. i know i can. silver's bane required me to begin again after i'd completed around 90,000 words. i saved around 30,000 intact... ripped another 45,000 out without mercy, and fudged around with the rest. the book ended up being 135,000 words. but that was an unfinished draft. i was writing the story off a synopsis that clearly wasn't working.

this story is a finished draft, so it feels like a whole thing... a lumpy, lop-sided thing, maybe - but a whole thing nonetheless. but it isn't DONE... it isn't right... it doesn't WORK. don't ask me how i know this. it's like an itch under my skin, a vague gnawing apprehension like maybe you got forgot to sign your tax return. every now and then i think about reading the manuscript. i know exactly where it is, behind the drivers seat in my car. i've stopped carrying it in and out but it comforts me to keep it close. but each time i think about reading it... i hear a choir of little voices whisper NO! WE'RE NOT DONE! GO AWAY - DO SOMETHING ELSE!

.... and i bless the Great Mother who's given me so much else to do. :)