Almost done with this pass of my novel. Am more than a little obsessed. Am also more than a little depressed, which I think has mostly to do with the events within the novel. Sometimes when I'm writing I engulf or rather am engulfed by the mood of what I write, like a chameleon taking on the coloration of a given rock or glen. I'm green and mottled today and terribly cloudy. I am also just about fifty pages from the end of this draft. So maybe sad too, this mood. This story will no longer be solely mine after this. It will belong to a small set of readers and then (after rewrites) to my agent and then (after rewrites) perhaps to editors in dingy or overbright rooms in fifth or tenth floor office suites in midtown Manhattan buildings. My manuscript. From my mind. And then someday maybe I'll hold it in my hands again, a book. But from here to there, so fraught. So many eyes. So much hope and therefore fear too. If and Maybe and Will It? And oh, this book, these words from me to you, the collective You, but also really to me because it gives me pleasure and pride and also pain mixed in. Like today. Cloudy and mottled in my head, chance of clearing tomorrow. The manuscript is and is not me. It leaves me soon. It becomes Other. Grows wings?
Posted by Tamar at February 8, 2005 09:40 PM