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You are here: Home / Uncategorized / Back to Work – Catching Up and Breaking Out the Red Pen

Back to Work – Catching Up and Breaking Out the Red Pen

November 6, 2009 by admin

Some people have problems looking at red ink. It reminds them of third grade in Mrs. Johnson’s class, when bloody papers also held a bloody grade of C, D, or F. For a long time I was one of those people. Overly sensitive about my work, I saw every mark as a personal attack, the affirmation that I had no skill. Bloody pages chased me in nighttime dreams and paralyzed my daily attempts to create. I played tricks with myself, using inks of green, blue, or purple to mark up my tentative drafts so that I would feel better.

Times have changed. I guess one thing that happened was that I passed 40 and my near vision went south. These days, red pens are requisite so that I can see the changes I want to make. Sometimes I can’t read my handwriting, but that’s another matter. I’ve come to a place where I am proud of my red ink, because it tells me that I am committed to making my work better. I can be tough on the writing without being tough on myself, and that feels good.

So this week, back to work after a month of travel, I felt oh so happy to break out the red pen yet again. I am focusing on two projects: Exodus (boy, I need a new title) and Blood and Loam. Yes, I’ve decided to get back to work on the novel! I thought I would begin some new material, but I feel excited and motivated to finish what I’ve started. I love vacation and travel, but it feels great to be back to work, doing what I love.

My plan is this: once I finish the next round of revisions on Exodus, I’m going to start posting it, one chapter a week (there are 52 chapters, one for each week of the year), for free on my website. I’m also going to podcast it. I am convinced that Exodus needs to be a gift. Time–and level of interest–will tell if I end up putting it in traditional book form.

Then there’s Blood and Loam, my marathon effort that I can’t seem to shake. The idea has been with me for decades. In the late 80s I went to work on it, but destroyed my draft after a premature critique. The person liked the work but felt my lead character was unrealistic. At the time, she was more than loosely based on me! Devastated, I shut down my writing for years. In the early 2000s I picked it back up again, but dropped it again in favor of some other projects. B&L is a dark, foreboding, treacherous kind of book, and I wasn’t willing to “go there.” I still have mixed feelings about it, but I keep thinking it’s a good story. By the way, my heroine no longer resembles me in the least! She’s developed her own background, appearance, and foibles. I like her a lot, particularly because she’s made up.

Last year I went to a writers conference hoping to be sent home with an admonishment to give up trying to write fiction, but the opposite happened. “Keep going,” people said. This summer I hired a published author to critique the work, and she said it was one of her favorite projects ever to work on. So, no matter how much I want this book to go away, I have a story that wants to be told.

So I break out the red pen yet again for yet another revision, one that will take me deeper into the story and into my craft. Yet again, I will have to poke around in dark, interior spaces. I may have bloody pages chasing me in the night again for a while. And I’m happy about it. I am where I need to be.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: books, creativity, nadine feldman, nadine galinsky, novelist, novels, writing

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