Stuck

I’m stuck.

I’ve been working on — that is, wrestling with — a chapter from my novel for far too long. Spinning, I guess you could say. I was away from the novel for a while, then I was sick for a couple of weeks, and now I’m having some trouble getting reacquainted with the book.

I keep going over the opening paragraph of this particular chapter. You’d think it would be perfect by now. It is not.

I’m also looking at other chapters I’ve written from this character’s point of view (about 80 or so pages) and trying to determine what, if anything, is salvageable. (Is is all shit? Should it all go? Maybe. Maybe I’m wasting my time by sifting through old pages and drafts, when I should be forging ahead with completely new material. And yet, looking at the older material, there’s some pretty decent stuff there. Also some pretty lousy stuff.)

This particular chapter comes about two-thirds of the way into part 1 of the novel. It’s the last chapter to be finished for the current draft of part 1 that I’m working on. So maybe part of it is being afraid to finish this chapter, because next I need to make some major surgical revisions once this draft is finished. I know what needs to be fixed, which is good; but the task ahead also seems daunting.

On a more positive and less neurotic note:

A while back I mentioned that The Sun accepted an excerpt from this novel. I recently found out that the piece will be appearing in the July issue.

July. That’s pretty soon.