Copyright © 2011 Bob R Bogle
A good deal of material that went into Chap 2 Draft 1 came directly out of genealogy notes, some of which I'd written years earlier, and these became long, bloated Facebook postings during the early part of the trip last year. As I was laboring to convert Chap 2 Draft 1 to Chap 2 Draft 2, I recalled that not infrequently while writing this novel I'd get to the end of a chapter and have to set aside a huge block of a certain kind of research in order to take up that which was required next. This sort of process leaves really granular chunks of material which require a lot of prettifying, to say the least.
A good deal of material that went into Chap 2 Draft 1 came directly out of genealogy notes, some of which I'd written years earlier, and these became long, bloated Facebook postings during the early part of the trip last year. As I was laboring to convert Chap 2 Draft 1 to Chap 2 Draft 2, I recalled that not infrequently while writing this novel I'd get to the end of a chapter and have to set aside a huge block of a certain kind of research in order to take up that which was required next. This sort of process leaves really granular chunks of material which require a lot of prettifying, to say the least.
I was well into Chap 2 Draft 2 when I discovered, or recalled, that really the first five chapters work together as a whole, and I needed to pull back my focus and think about them that way. I now saw that I had two major problems. One was that in the interest of cohesion I had to create an outline for the first five chapters, to reassemble everything in an order that would make more sense. It took a few days, but I did so. The bigger problem was the sheer amount of raw information that had to be dramatized somehow in Chap 2. I saw two possibilities, neither of which I much liked: I could either create and introduce a new character, or I could come up with some kind of gimmick. After a few days I came up with a solution which is something of a merger of these two ideas. We'll have to see what you think when I finish writing Chap 2 Draft 2 and get it uploaded.
For the time being, I've revised and uploaded Chap 1 Draft 3. I prefer this rewrite, but if you've read Chap 1 Draft 2, it won't really be necessary to read this revision; however, know that some material that was previously in Chap 1 Draft 2 will eventually "reappear" in Chap 2 Draft 2.
And when will Chap 2 begin to appear? We'll see. . . .
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