Here’s what I learned about writing this week:

1) The hotter it gets outside, the harder it is to concentrate.
2) Provided I’ve eaten and loaded up on coffee, I can hit my mark in 2 seconds. Hitting the mark is a term lifted from acting. When an actor hits their mark it means the director is about to call Action! and they have their game face on.
3)There is a point each day to walk away from the PC. When the eyes start twitching, it is past that point.

Check for a special letter to Buddhapuss next Tuesday.

Another day, another 7 pages. 12-14 more days like this and the 6th draft should be in a good place.

Think writing is an exciting job? Here’s what a full writing day ( when a full one is available ) looks like in my apartment:

Each writing day starts with a review of the first 50 pages and about 1/2 hour of tweaks. A review of the last 3 days worth of work follows immediately after, lasting about an 1 hour. This provide focus and preserves continuity, mostly by keeping me in touch with what actually is on the page. Most writers think they are a lot more skilled than they are until confronted with their recent work. The next 5 hours are reserved for all new material. Somewhere in there there’s some snacking and lunch. After dinner there its time to review the days work.

And then it’s blogging time.

One thing I’ve learned through the revision process is that Hemingway was right. First drafts are s***. Or in my case, the first 3 sucked wind.

Here’s my thought for the day about writing. Once underway, the basic process resembles a giant boulder rolling down a steep hill. In other words, one page leads to two, two leads to three and so on. The longer the ball races down the hill, the faster it travels, the easier it is to write a coherent page on the first try. After all, objects in motion tend to stay in motion.

Now when the writing is going like that, the best approach is just to work with it. Trying to wrestle a rolling boulder back up a hill is well, rather like arguing with a skydiver in the midst of a free fall. Inertia justs wants to bring them back in for a landing.

But there’s a trade off, because there are precious few hills of infinite height, which means and some point the boulder must be “reloaded” and pushed back up the next hill for another trip down.

Thus the journey begins and ends, and begins again. And sometimes rolling with momentum is just as hard as trying to create it.

Work on draft 6 of The Ridge Runner continues. Since starting work on May 10th I’ve revised, rewritten or written for the first time more than 225 pages. Using the Revision History feature in Open Office 1.1 makes it clear how much the book has changed in such a short time.

I’m not alone in the sudden decision to change the perspective. John Irving ( World According to Garp, Cider House Rules ) handed over in his manuscript for his latest book recently had a change of heart at the last minute. The publisher and editor had accepted the draft, which was in first person, but he decided that the story was best served as a third person kind of tale. Now he’s revising it from the top down in a mad rush to make the deadline.

Maybe there is something to just going with the gut even if it seems incredibly inconvenient. True, this is the same gut that was pretty sure first person was the one true path. Ah well, don’t want to question myself out of a good story now do I?