The Freedom to Write and Must-Do Hard Work, Must

Photo from Pixabay.com

I finished the very long Ashley section in my rolling draft of The Harvest.  That is the fourth rewrite of my novel draft, a post-apocalyptic coming of age piece, which it is getting a major overhaul.  I have been thinking about the length of the chapter, which alternate points of view, and I realized, I have been trying to force the Alan and Ashley sections to be equal in length and content, if that make sense.  But, in truth, the narrative is about Ashley, so if they are not equal, fuck it.  I mean, any time you try to force your writing, you are making an error. 

Today, I have a good chunk of the day to write because my husband has taken my daughter to the zoo.  I pretty much set the goal and informed the universe and my beautiful family that this novel is going to be done by June 2018, then onto the reshaping process.

I am horrible at revising my work, and have learned a lot from writing this long piece.  Like, I should really follow the writing advice I give to my creative students and map out characters and conflicts more.  That will save a shit load of work later, especially if you have a memory like mine. 

So, here's a metaphor for you, Writing is like the Party.  Revision is like the Clean-Up afterwards.  One is energizing and fun.  The other one wears you down while you have a hangover.  Still, both are equally important, and you can't leave your house a pig stye.  How's that for some writing truth?

This week is also supposed to be the launch week for my first self-pub.  I await the guru Eric Allen Yakee to disengage himself from the she-Kraken and come to my house.  There will be delicious mole and horchata and my signature rice.  Yankee is a fantastic political poet, and he has urged me to send my poems out.  Guess what I'm doing in the next two weeks?  Growing a pair of huevos and sending my work out.  You can sample the recent ones in the Poetry section. 

I wrote one for my mother for the first time.  I will never read it to her, of course, and if any of my siblings on Facebook rat me out, I will end you!  I will avenge myself my writing poetry about you, and it will be foul. 

Well, I am going to clean the dining room and start working on my summer school syllabi.  I am really excited to be teaching creative writing this summer, and I hope to have my digital pubs out, so I can walk my students through the process.  Don't get me wrong.  I don't emphasize publishing, but some of these writers' work is sublime, and they are ready to launch their work into the vast expanse.  They just need a nudge.  I mean, the world is so jacked up, it needs more beauty in it.

(Oh, on a random parting note, I pulled the HTML code from my memory banks, and I think I will be able to display images without overtaxing my allotted Weebly space.  And I am still able to post the novel draft, which was troubling me.  I was worried I would not be able to post the *.pdf anymore, but I was joyfully mistaken!)

Today, write something nice about your Mom and do your hard writer work, even the house clean-up.  #Resist