The First One to Speak Loses

Epigraph is from one of my favorite books.

What we, or at any rate what I, refer to confidently as memory—meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion—is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling. Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life ever to be wholly acceptable, and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end. In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw.

—William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Day Six: July 7, 2013.

What a day! Printed out the entire manuscript, 133 pages, which is not long for a novel, in fact it's quite short. Today is the first time I called it a novel. For years I've considered it stories, loosely a novel-in-stories. It's a strange feeling that I liken to looking at your child one day and seeing him or her as an adult. This epiphany required an additional journal entry this evening.

I'm about half way through reading it and making margin notes. I'm also studying "structure." Been identifying plot, and a series of sub-plots. Working on the three act model divided by two major plot points. Diagrams and numbers = plot.

Here's what it looks like . . .






Was able to do some more reading. Can't get enough of William Trevor stories.





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