Honey Melon HikerChick

Journaling in the car while parked in New Paltz:

Seized by the urge to write and the multitude of distractions, I cast a quick spell: “if I do anything else first, I might not write.”  Thus entranced, I pull the notebook and pen out, right here, in the parking lot.  The pen falls between the passenger’s seat and the console, into the unreachable abyss.  I can see it.  I slide the seat all the way back.  Now I can’t see the pen.  I slide the seat all the way forward.  The pen reappears – magic – and it is right where it was: unreachable.  I need a tool.  An empty broken CD case: perfect.  I poke and prod, and slide the seat all the way back again.  The pen tumbles to freedom.  I write.

I write, the thoughts reminding me of fireworks.  They spring up, bright, enticing and fade to obscuring smoke.  The next one needs to better than the first, but then they are both gone.  Some bubble up from the depths of my unconscious; some are skimmed off the top.  Cobwebbed corners and front-center vie for top billing.  It’s all a jumble.  A mind full of yard sale thoughts, dumped into awareness to be picked over and sorted through.  Maybe a selection will be brought home, cleaned up and tried out.  Maybe some will actually work.  Probably there will be at least one or two that receive immediate rejection: “What was I thinking?” and one or two that I will passionately, irrationally fall in love with (not unlike the multiply broken and re-glued blue china horse figurine that I rescued from a “free box”).

The parallel between the work of writing Honey Melon Fudge and moving forward in my own emotional/spiritual life is annoying the hell out of me.  No matter where I go, it seems I am always there, lurking, ready to monkeywrench whatever the project at hand may be.  I thought I had made a slick getaway.  I thought I had successfully ducked out the back door unseen, but no.  There I am, flawed, raw, dressed in work-in-progress regalia, causing problems, making the first draft need more work.  Trumpeting the unfinished state of my novel, and, guess what, the unfinished state of my own process.

Make Rob more balanced, more real, more multidimensional is the feedback.  In some ways, the whole point of writing this story is to deny him that realness, to deny him multidimensionality.  I need revenge, to right the scales and even the score by exposing him for what he is.  I wanted it to be simple: black hats and white hats.  And I wanted everyone to see it my way.

******************

Months have passed and the book is finished.  I took my editor’s advice and gritted my teeth through a rewrite that balanced the Rob character out, rendering him more real, less cardboard-cut-out (although such a characterization would be perfect for dart practice).  Not surprisingly, the book is better for it.  I like it better now, but it is no longer a call to arms.  It is no longer a hatefest against Rob and all the other robbers out there.  And again no surprise – the bonds of hate have loosened just a little and I crash into myself less frequently these days.

Go figure.