Writing

After reading my horoscope at the coffee shop on Sunday, and blogging about how I needed to take a step back from the novel, guess what I did. I decided to work on an excerpt of the novel, because somehow in my brain, that seemed completely removed from the novel. I swear, sometimes, I can be really dense.

I’ve been making myself nuts over the novel. It’s too long, it’s too short, it’s not good enough. It’s done and I should stop obsessing and send it out already. It will never be done, ever.

I’ve decided to edit in 10 page chunks. I’m taking 10 pages at a time, pasting them into a new doc, and adding descriptions here and there to make the pacing better. I’m working on it until I’ve added 500 words, and then I’m pasting those 10 pages back into the story, slightly fatter for the attention.

This question of whether or not my novel is too short is plaguing me. I know what matters most is that it’s good, but I also know I can be a little harsh with the editing.

When she called to say she was coming to town, we both agreed it was a great excuse to have lunch and waste a few hours wondering the isles of our favorite books store. We are both in love with Skylight Books on Vermont.

Everything I’ve read is that you don’t really want to be below 70,000 for a novel. So now I’m all freaked out. Is my novel too short?

The thing I wrote most about were the time in my life that I have lived on islands. The smell of that thick warm air, jet fuel, cigarette smoke and plumerias kept transporting me, even as I loaded car seats in and out of rentals, to times I almost never think of anymore.