First Drafts

First drafts are terrible. First drafts are intellectual regurgitation exercises: words expunged, vomited out onto paper without sense, without intricate thought. All of that is meant to come out later. The first draft is the point where you lay it all out. Or so conventional wisdom informs me. I am relearning the exercise of first drafting. Or no, I am relearning the exercise of being critiqued in the first stage of writing what you hope will shake the world. Or at the very least, one person. My ideal reader has been located within this writing group: an individual who is both cultured and attuned to international literature. Everyone's opinion counts of course and I take what I can use and discard the rest as always, but to find people who straddle both sides of the audience you cater to, is a rarity. When you find it, you hold onto it listening to any tremor, any subtle change.

Every time I think about it--being here, doing what I am doing, wanting it for seven years before finally attaining it--it shocks me. To think there was every possibility of not attending, of not being here, of not being given the opportunity to shine, makes it all the more riveting. Knowing though, that my faith was cemented before any decision was made, before acceptances even started trickling in, is heartening. Despite not always making it on time, and at times not making it at all, I carry Him with me everywhere. In every little action, knowing or more appropriately believing, that there are no coincidences, that things are either meant or not and realizing the incredibly thin ice I'm on with that statement, completes me.

With the research behind me, little doubts are rising to the surface although none of them have anything to do with questioning my faith in a Higher Power [like before], nor do they have anything to do with a hand-me-down faith, which I have dispelled by walking away and returning on my terms. The only terms that really matter if you are going to believe in something. They have everything to do with the values, the how-tos. Questions are good: they provide you with a certain versatility to challenge your own limitations, acknowledge your fallibility and accept that there is something bigger than you out there, whether you attribute that as 'God', the Force or a Higher Power. Words are insignificant in theology.

Gray has unleashed something again: started off a new dialog this time. The story that could challenges me in ways I do not quite understand, but know that this is not the last time I'm going to write on socio-religious themes. There will be tangents of course; I think the creative soul in me [pardon the theatrics] would die a little if it kept to one side persistently. The Carousel Man has shown me that imagination is well and alive although I would like to invent a dialect if possible. What would that entail? Studying phonetics, perhaps? It is quite doable once the first draft is over and the story in its essentials has been told. The Carousel Man, Postcard Memories and For Sale: three stories constructed from nothing, imprinted with human values, parceled as mythological, social and capitalistic tales of love, destiny, betrayal and the deeply moving forces of intrinsic humanity. My stories, even in their darkest moments, shine through optimistically. The idealism of their author always making an appearance.

All of this writing, reviewing, constant back-and-forth writing about writing is going to help me in that essay I have to write before the year is over. Chronologizing and putting various different things into perspective: I never realized how easy it would be for me until now. Didn't understand why I breezed through the first draft as quickly as I did. It surprised me. Suddenly, I had a whole lot to write.

But for now and for the next three weeks I can take a bit of a breather from everything else and focus on what I'm here to do: the writing. The writing of Gray most specifically. Everything else will tie in to that one accomplishment.

It does satisfy me, however, to know that I can cross genres in fiction and beyond it dipping a tentative toe into cinematic themes.

Cannot rest on the laurels for long though. Everything that begins must have an end and we are in the middle of the program and the first chapter has not yet reached a satisfactory conclusion. To writing then.

Always, always returning to the writing.

And writing a novel is a shitty task. But someone's tasked me to do it.