Monday, February 25, 2002
Higher Grounds Café, San Francisco
I was anxious to get started today and even anxious to write to you. Thoughts have been bubbling through my head all morning and not all of them bad. Since I am so ready to go, I may not write a long letter. But I promise you that it will be scattered and lively. On the whole, I am very pleased with my writing – I mean the words and sentences and paragraphs of the book. But I still have the nagging feeling that I am not digging deep enough, that I am not tapping into the essence of the work. I have been good about describing the external landscapes of my character’s worlds and I have been good about describing action and building momentum but perhaps I have been ignoring the most important landscape of all and that is the mind of Jacob Flint. Do I even know what he is thinking? Am I, as the writer, over-thinking this? Does one need to think of this? Do I really need scenes and or descriptions of his thoughts? Or are actions sufficient to explain them? Does he have great fear? Great doubt? Great bouts of self-deprecation and if so how do those feelings manifest themselves? So far, he is doing. He is being. He is acting. It is almost as if he is on auto-pilot and perhaps this makes sense, to a point, but what is that point and how will I know when I get to it?
Last week I wrote most of chapter thirty-two in long-hand in my notebook and I suppose it will take me most of this week to type it up and turn it into something that makes sense (to me I mean). It is about fifteen hand-written, stream-of-consciousness pages with exposition, scene and dialog all mixed in. This chapter is the preparation for Jacob’s first solo revival and in it someone very close to him will die but I won’t say who (though you can probably guess). The only two people close to him who are not here are his mother and the old woman (but the old woman is already dead). Now I think I’ve got to cut his legs out from under him and I have to tell you I’m scared as Hell. More scared than he is I think. This next scene is crucial, and a turning point, and I think all my conceptions may be wrong, but I won’t know until it’s done. I wish I could write faster and increase my word count. But I have to have faith that this is how it is meant to be done. I don’t mean that I should not push myself, because I think I should, but I just feel I’m worrying too much. I wish I could show you what I have written and I wish you could reassure me but I know that that would only be a crutch. I can’t rely on help or good weather to get me through this expedition. Like Ernest Shackleton, I must merely persevere. I only hope I don’t wind up eating my dog. Spring is here soon, and thus the thaw, and when these ice-floes break apart maybe a ship will come. Stay well, and rest assured that I am giving this my whole heart and soul because I want you to be proud..
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