OUT OF THE DRAWER

Stephen King, On Writing, suggests after your book is written put it away.  Don’t look at it, or think about it for six weeks, or more. Then pull it out of the drawer and read it all in one sitting, if possible.

So after the designated time frame, while the crowds shopped on Black Friday, I curled up on the flowered loveseat in my bedroom. I tried to resist making edits. I wanted to concentrate on the story flow, the characters, any bumps in continuity but I couldn’t help noting typos and grammatical errors.

After five and a half hours, excluding potty breaks, lunch and long minutes walking out the kinks in my legs and back, I read 213 pages, doubled-spaced, with one inch margins all around, of the memoir I have labored over for the past ten years.

But this memoir isn’t the same book I started ten years ago. It has narrowed in scope and deepened in detail and is now ready for a final editing before I ship it off to my beta readers—probably the beginning of the New Year.

The end is in sight!