Strategic Procrastination

So, how's HP going? I was progressing pretty well, but then decided to start at the beginning again. I'm just not happy enough about those earlier chapters. They need further refining. Part of me thinks I'm procrastinating about moving forward to the really difficult chapters...the chapters that really need work. It's like someone who maybe has an entire garage to clean, but instead spends their time polishing the already-shiny silver. But the other part of me thinks I'm being strategic. The first chapters set the stage for everything that follows, and if the first third of the novel isn't really tight nothing else will work. Adding to the "smart" category is the fact that whenever I change something in the beginning of the book, it has to be followed through during the rest of the book. So if I'm really happy with the first third, then revision in the rest of the novel will go that much smoother because I won't have to re-tie all my literary knots. Whatever it is, I'll be patient with myself. As long as I'm writing, and as long as the novel is improving, then why worry.


Also, quite a while back my super-smart writer friend -- known as JoJo -- read and critiqued my earlier revisions. I read and printed her critique, but then put it aside...thinking I would finish the entire revision first, and then go back and make updates based on her wise critiques. I recently re-read her critiques and decided I should make some of those revisions right now. I'm going to take most of her advice because she's so perceptive, creative, and also because in my mind she kind of represents my ideal audience.


Anyway. Part of me feels I'm spinning my wheels, part of me thinks it's important I take my time with the all-important first third of the novel. No matter what happens or how far I get, soon I will need to start learning about publishing. I don't need to have the whole novel totally revised to start trying to gauge interest. This April I'm attending a class at The Loft on publishing, since I really am clueless about selling my work. I hate selling things! I've been published before, but I'm so lazy about the whole process. That's one thing I will for sure need to correct this summer.

Nothing else going on. This weekend I was sick, Dave spent the ENTIRE weekend hunched over close to 100 student papers, and we watched my parents' cat...whose favorite passtime is watching water drip out of a faucet.