With a new year coming, it seems a good time to decide what projects to carry forward into the new year and which would work better in a fireplace. Thankfully I only have two unfinished projects: a collaborative screenplay and The Confession. Work stopped on the collaborative screenplay because the writing partner got bogged down with life responsibilities. I’m rather hopeful they will have more free time in the next year, but if their schedule remains as congested by April, I’ll run with the project alone.
After a number of false starts, I began–for the second, well actually, a third time–work on The Confession. This is getting to be an older unfinished manuscript. Old being January 2006 as the date of its first incarnation, December 2006-February 2007 marked the second revolution. While I had The Last Track, a screenplay and a contest to keep me occupied during this period, I’m not thrilled about 145 pages kicking around in limbo for almost two years. The other day I realized I’m no closer to a first draft of the manuscript now than on day one. Kind of a bummer, and wholly my fault.
What is on the page is at least workable. There’s a lot of directions to explore; there’s a lot more possibilities. I found it interesting that one of the same issues the agent expressed concerns about in The Last Track also manifested in The Confession.
More specifically the very random and occasional tendency to traverse from limited third person to third person omniscient and then back. Having revised these sort of POV shifts just recently, it was much easier to spot them in an unrelated piece of writing. My preference for short, tight scenes and sentences probably contributed to the bad habit; sometimes I latch onto the most economical way of presenting an idea, rather than the most consistent and transparent.
In any event, my goal: work on The Confession right until Kerry returns The Last Track, get the manuscript back to the agent for further consideration by December 20th and then press ahead into the new year with this new-old project.
Oh yeah, and survive Moscow in December.