Down To The Wire

So, it's been a good week. Almost a full week of freedom! Kind-of. The truth is, this week I've been a slave to my own expectations and bad work habits. Over the weekend I was talking to a friend about the traumatic experience of playing Dorothy in the school production of The Wizard of Oz when I was in third grade. That experience cured me forever of thinking that I might want to be an actress. You know what the problem was? The weighty burden of having to memorize all those lines. And you know what the problem with memorization is? You don't know for sure whether you've really done it or not! Totally scary for a third grader who's about to stand up in front of an auditorium full of people.

This week has been like that for me a little bit. That's the thing with the novel. I can move things around on the page, I can add words even, but I can't always tell if I've made things any better with revision, or if the new stuff is any good, or whether it goes with the old stuff at all. I can't always tell for myself if there's a THERE there. My next deadline is tomorrow, so I've been sitting behind my new laptop a lot, drinking my pretty lattes and reading the comments my great writing group wrote on my last submission, and hoping that wherever this novel is going, I'll get there with it.