It’s been an incredibly busy year with work and family commitments and consequently it has been forever since I had the opportunity to pick up the first draft of my third novel. 9 months perhaps, maybe more? I’m not sure, I’m writing the novel on Scrivener (I’m in the love it camp) and I’m not sure how to check the date of the last ‘save’ (scarily though, I’m also reminded that I didn’t compile the draft and keep a word version for safety…).
Fortunately it’s all there and this morning I began to read it. Initially, I felt like a stranger to my own writing. The narrative, while unfolding paragraph by paragraph and plot reveal by plot reveal was engaging but at the outset I felt like a bystander. Even though the story felt strangely familiar there was a vague sense that I was reading a novel someone else has written. Ironically, it’s an apt feeling as memory is such a theme in my life just now.
It was just a temporary blindness. As I tentatively read on, with each word I am being pulled inwards, my old sense of self being tossed to the surface. My memory is being consumed by familiar smells and moments, and tumbling with ownership and direction into the story.
In a month or so, I’ll be ready to begin turning this draft into a novel that can be sent out and that’s exciting. It’s good to know I’m going back to go forward.
Do you ever write something and then feel like you are a stranger?
Margot McCuaig 