Point B

I turned around in my desk chair this morning to appreciate my space. My desk at home is between the two windows at the front of the house on the second floor. As I pivot my chair away from the windows to the interior of the room, I can see my worktable which is directly behind me. It has the same items that have been in the same places for a long time. They have become things that I see but don't really notice anymore as I go in and out of the room.

The cork board with the index cards caught my eye this morning. Why do I still have that up and intact? The index cards have hand written descriptions of the characters in the draft of my novel that I haven't touched in about a year (I think it's closer to two). I got up to get a closer look of what I had put on each card.

Name, physical description, and a few character traits were penciled in, most in lessening degrees. Each was a pretty shallow snapshot of each character. Even reading everything that was described on the most filled card I knew it said very little about each character and not much more was added to the novel draft. I recognized all that after not noticing and/or ignoring this board and all it's index cards for so very long.

I thought I had an idea of who each character was supposed to be and how they should look when I started. I thought I had proven that by putting them up on individual index cards. I know now, that was barely the beginning. That was merely the starting point. It was only point A in an entire alphabet of steps that needed to come after that task. For some silly reason, when I finished my first draft, I thought I was at point X or even Y in the whole writing process. It was the reason I kept thinking I had done so horribly on that draft. I know now I can't judge my own work when it's only at the point A stage. There is so much more work to do to get it where it should be before I need to think about how well or badly I've written.

It's what I have been thinking lately. I have more knowledge of how I can start again and take on point B in this long process of work I need to do. I'm actually looking forward to it now that I have a clearer, in depth picture of what needs to be done.  I might have actually learned something in the past year.

Maybe that was my reason I kept that board up and intact. I knew it wasn't done. I have more work to do.



TT