And the editing process continues...

I call it editing. But it's editing, revising, rewriting, writing new sections, writing new chapters, all in lots of red ink on the all almost 200 pages of my novel. So, it's days and days of frantic, "in the zone" scrawling in red ink. Bright red ink, so I can see it and hopefully read it. Lots of arrows and boxes with text in them and instructions in the margins as to where this new bit of text is going to go and where that sentence should go and crossing out and rewriting and consolidating ideas, paragraphs, and sentences.

And lately it's been The Shins but before that it was everything country and sometimes it's Modest Mouse but not normally rap. Something inspirational with a good groove that will hopefully keep me moving forward. To the next paragraph, the next page, the next chapter...until I get to the end. And insanity. Lots of creative, beautiful, inspiring, wonderfully worded, and not-so-wonderfully worded insanity. It's intensive and tiring and lots and lots of hard work, but it makes me so freaking happy.

This is my novel. My first. My baby. And I love it. I love everything about it. All the rough, ugly, grotesque, beautiful, twisted, funny, scary parts. So I trudge forward through the mire of living, breathing, loving, terrifying words. Day after day. Only to be followed by days of making all of these corrections in the computer. Back to my novel I go...