On September 13, 2012 at
5:38 p.m., I completed the fourth and final draft of my new novel manuscript. But the feeling of closure was eluding
me, even as I wrapped up being a writer for the week and hit the road as a musician
for the weekend, and it wasn't until days later that the point was driven
home. And it had everything to do
with Page 333.
But first, fellow writers, a
peek into my process.
Every chapter, regardless of
whether or not I'm writing it for the first time or revising it for the thirtieth
time, gets copied and pasted into my MacBook's "TextEdit" program. Here, I use the program's
"Speech" function to literally read the chapter back to me, and I do
this to catch all of the dropped words and weird grammar and spelling problems
that my tired eyes may have missed.
I then print out the chapter, put it in the binder, and move on to the
next one.
Now, sometimes as I'm
revising, I may find a few consistency problems in the manuscript that require
my going back and making corrections to specific issues throughout. Like any Word document, I use the
"Find and Replace" feature, and then these pages get re-printed and
then inserted into the binder where they belong according to page number. Well, my aforementioned lack of closure
was wiped away as working in conjunction with my obsession with the number
three, the Universe dictated that the very last page out of approximately
twenty-five insert pages would be Page 333.
Closure achieved.
I have since moved on to
writing the Synopsis for potential agency representation, as it is all a part
of the package, a crucial step in the traditional publishing game that I intend
to play. In a way, the Synopsis is
harder to write than the book, as it forces an objective view of the material
in order to include only the crucial plot points. But even this step has enforced the closure, for as I go
back into the actual manuscript to find where I've left off in the Synopsis, I
find myself reading with a freed-up mind that's just enjoying the quality of
the writing as a result of over a year's worth of hard work revising.
And it's all because of Page
333, the page that told me to stop, the key that locked this baby up ... at
least for now.
The journey begins.
