That’s right, I finished the 2nd draft of the novel I’ve been writing since, what was it, November? I think it was November.

I had to make some serious adjustments, as I realized the novel was epistolary—a letter from the protagonist/narrator to one of the other characters—only about 30 pages from the end. Until then, he’d been addressing her as “she” and by her name in the 3rd person, but then I realized that “she” is really a “you” that the narrayor is supposed to be addressing. That took a lot of searching out, basically rereading the whole thing and rewriting big chunks of it, because changing “she” to you obviously just doesn’t cut it. The way you write about “she” and the way you write directly to someone are quite different, and reveal a lot about how the narrator feels about the person addressed.

I’ve emailed a few people the password to download the novel draft, so now I’m going to relax, and think about what to write next. I was toying with the idea of a short story or two, especially one about a theme that came up and which I couldn’t fit into the novel, but I think a day off isn’t going to kill me. But ah, what a feeling of satisfaction. I’ve kinda-sorta finished this thing, or at least a pretty crucial stage in the completion of this thing. Cool.

So now, my writing plans: I’m going to work on a short story or two, try to complete a poetry manuscript I three-quarters finished writing before coming to Korea, and then, I think, I’ll turn back to that novel I was working on before, reread the excessively long draft, nab the good ideas, inflate those good ideas a bit, and make them more central to the book, while dropping mounds and mounds of textual flab. from the thing in the process. But for now, I think I’ll go plkay a video game and get some sleep. Since school is starting soon, it might be a good idea to start reverting to normal sleep patterns again, especially since I’m no longer writing a gloomy story about some dead guy.

Whee!