Sunday, November 05, 2006

The Blood Intelligentsia - Edit Update #2

Have you ever accepted a dare?

Like a dare to eat an entire plate full of spaghetti in less than one minute?

Like a dare to down a bowl full of steaming tomato soup in one gulp?

Do you recall how the soup tasted pouring down your throat? Burning, itching, the feel of someone’s hand straining the muscles in your esophagus.

So far, that’s what I’ve felt in editing my novel The Blood Intelligentsia. Like someone gripping my throat, taunting me, making me doubt my ability to finish the novel.

It’s a strange, demon thing.

But I will finish this novel before the end of the year. I will take in this chore no matter how large a bite it seems.

Because I’ve realized something in going over the first draft I’ve prepared.

It’s a good story.

I like the characters. I like their interactions, their little hatreds towards one another. I like my main character Jack Kramer. I like how he is desperate, but determined, squeezing his fingers into his palm as though he is crushing a piece of coal into a diamond—how he is determined to become what he wants. How he sees a vision for himself and vows to obtain it no matter what the cost.

Jack Kramer is a mathematician. Numbers, and their pure and simple lock-step logic are his religion. His salvation.

He has only to piece together fragments of his mind, his will, and elements of his surroundings to discover his purpose. I long to see him complete himself, assemble his purpose like a grand, nearly unsolvable jigsaw puzzle.

I don’t mean to wax melodramatic. Perhaps I am too engrossed in my story to think straight. But then, perhaps my character is in turn now writing me.

Yes. I made him, and so now he is working to remake me.

I hope I am up to the task. I hope I can complete it as he would like.

I realize now that more than a simple story with pages and letters is at stake here. But the very souls of my characters.

I’m nearing page 150 out of 519. No, not nearly good enough. Not at all. So much more is required. So many more demands of my characters require meeting.

I’ll meet them. Soon enough, I’ll meet them.

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