Hello Old Friend

A big part of my process happens away from pen and paper or the keyboard. I like to think things through. I'll do this in bed at night before going to sleep, in the shower, or on my way to and from work. Ideally, if I can spend a few solid months with an idea in my head then the writing itself should be fairly easy.

Now that I've taken almost 2 months off from my NaNoWriMo novel, it seems like I should be ready to jump back into it and finish it off. Sounds reasonable, but there's just one problem. My first novel has been occupying a lot of my fiction-based thoughts lately. The first draft is long finished, but I never gave it a proper edit. I think now might be a good time for that.

I have no aspirations of re-writing the thing, but a polish will at least bring it up to a state where I am comfortable showing it to people. I also think that in the time that I've been away from it I have grown quite a bit and had experiences that could only help make the novel better.

I've already re-worked the opening in my head and I have plans to modify other key portions. I'm giving myself until April to see how it goes. If I can't sort things out or feel that I am wasting my time by then, I'll finally put the manuscript (actually it's a 3.5 diskette) in the bottom drawer of my desk for good.