Today, I sit and work.

It’s been a strange week. Torn is out for copy-edits and proofreading, which leaves me in limbo. I can’t work on that until I know what I’m fixing. I could attack Book Three, but I’m just going to have to switch gears again when the edits on Torn come back, and I find that a tough adjustment if I get too deep into another project right now.

I don’t know how some people switch between multiple projects every day. I really don’t.

I have to work, though. Have to keep momentum up. So what I’m doing right now is just reading Book Three and taking notes. No changes. No deep digging and hard word-slinging. Just observing. Floating. Poking a little bit to see which parts are still wiggly and under-cooked.

And I’m lying in bed at night and having ideas.

Revision planning, baby.

Revision feels magical to me. Oh, it’s frustrating to read things through and realize how much work there is to be done.

But the potential there is so exciting. At this point, anything is possible. Maybe this time I will achieve the impossible, and have the words on the page reflect everything that’s in my mind. It’s all there. I just need to find it.

There’s a quotation I’ve seen attributed to Michelangelo:

Revisions feel a bit like that. The first draft was important. That was where I started with a big block of marble and started hammering away, creating the basic shape of the story.

And it’s a good shape. A solid shape. You can totally see what it’s supposed to be, and most of the details are visible. I wouldn’t want it to see the light of day at this point, but I wouldn’t die of embarrassment if it did.

But it could be so much more. The statue is still trapped in a layer of stone, and it’s my privilege to take a walk around the piece, observe it, mark my cuts and adjustments, and make it a thing of beauty.

At least, that’s the theory. In practice, I’m procrastinating, afraid to look at how much work there really is to be done. I can see my vision clearly… it’s just achieving it that’s the problem.

But I’ll never get there if I don’t start. So in the words of Michelangelo:

Um… that would be a different Michelangelo. Still inspiring, though.

What are you all up to this week?