This weekend, I got my voice back.
Funny how the simple ritual of perching oneself on a barstool in a Brooklyn cafe (Laptopistan, if you will) and opening a document can mean so much. In short: I’ve not only started a totally fresh round of revisions—approaching, let alone working on the manuscript for the first time in months—but I see the story, the book, the characters, the motivations, everything in a totally different way. Sitting down to work yesterday afternoon, I sat down to a brand new book. (And yes, I feel lucky that it’s my book.)
With a few simple “Find and Replace” combinations, characters I’ve known for close to four years had their entire worlds altered—from their names to their family histories to their upbringings. In tandem, my entire world is altered, as well (not to mention the structure of the book; but that’s another tangent entirely). The strangest, most enthralling part of all of this: I didn’t feel like I was sacrificing anything nor rendering years of work futile, rather like I was fixing a logical error to its correct state. Confidence (and a little bit of breathing room) really is everything, isn’t it?
This weekend, I got myself back.
M
