Another Draft Done

If any of my former composition or creative writing students ever wonder if I practice what I preach, here is the proof right here: another completed draft of my novel. This one is chronologized with time monikers replacing chapter markers and the narrator listed in a subhead whenever the point of view changes. The entire process was equal parts Mrs Dalloway and Louise Erdrich, with a smattering of Wells Tower, I like to think. (If I've never recommended it, run out and read Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned. It is the single most narratively diverse and broad in subject-matter of any story collection I've ever read. Ever.)

While it sounds rather complex and was rather time consuming, the result seems simple and straightforward. It definitely looks more like a cohesive novel,which is what my agent was looking for, but I guess I'll find out if I succeeded to an acceptable end when I learn whether or not it needs further revision.

And I'm game for revision (within limits). Why? Because I practice what I preach. Now, if you are currently a composition student and your teacher has recently commented on your rough draft that you need to reorganize to fit your thesis statement, go do it. Right now, because your teacher is right. 100%. Listen to him/her. They know.

In literary news, I am now reading the sixth 44 Scotland Street novel, The Importance of Being Seven. I am just as smitten with this installation as I have been with the last five. It appears as though there are still two or three books in the series, so I'll have to seek them out at some point. They were not on the shelves at my new local library. I'm still keen on serialized novels, both writing and reading them, so if you know of any modern or postmodern literary authors writing in this format, let me know. I'm interested in reading them.

"Children were no longer made to learn poetry by heart. And so the deep rhythms of the language, its inner music, was lost to them, because they had never it embedded in their minds. And geography had been abandoned too -- the basic knowledge of how the world looked, simply never instilled; all in the name of educational theory and of the goal of teaching children how to think. But what, she wondered, was the point of teaching them how to think if they had nothing to think about?"

-Alexander McCall Smith, Love Over Scotland