Thursday, April 10, 2008

First Draft

Stunned is the best description of my feeling of having finished the first draft of my novel. It ended. Not necessarily where I thought. Better perhaps? Of course, that’s where the story went, I simply followed it and it ended where it did.

I’ve been working on My Brother is Chasing Me for just over a year. I started writing while at a writer’s workshop at Mt. Calvary Monastery in Santa Barbara. A week ago, sitting at the same desk at Mt. Calvary the story concluded.

Nora Gallagher encouraged me to just let go, to open my soul and write. Interestingly enough my mom told me the same thing about two months ago. Well the first draft is done. Of course Anne Lamont said that we all are entitled to a “shitty first draft.” So I need to get back to working on the second draft.

For the curious this is not a baseball story. It’s a story about a 30-something woman priest and college chaplain. No, it’s not autobiographical. I must admit though that they’re probably a lot of me in several characters. As taught, I must write about what I know. Maybe my next book will be about baseball. Or maybe a college president?

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