Tomorrow is the day my Advanced Novel class with Fred Leebron will be work-shopping my manuscript. The feelings whirling around in my mind are conflicting. I'm scared; I'm excited; I'm worried. Mostly, I'm excited. We are a great class. We are different ages, different races; we come from different backgrounds and carry with us different skills. I see novels in abstract pictures, that many of my classmates say they had not realized were even a part of the manuscripts they had written. One girl can spot a theme buried under miles of endless prose or stiff dialogue. There are others that can pinpoint an image, or dissect the pacing of a scene. Not to mention our fearless, blunt, funny, and sincere leader. Fred Leebron could teach a dog a better way to lick itself. OK, so that came out wrong, but I think he would appreciate the metaphor.
Also, tomorrow night, I will be doing a reading of my own work. What will I be reading you ask? Hell if I know. I'm thinking of reading a part of my young adult novel, but don't know what part, or how exactly it would go over. I also don't know if I should do a section from my girl narrator or my boy narrator. They, like my class, both have distinctive qualities that make them good. My boy is stronger than my girl, but then, that's how it's supposed to be, at least for my novel.
Once again, this week has flown by at an alarming rate. Time is such an issue for me. The concept of a minute completely alludes me. The concept of a week is no more real or graspable than imagining another solar system beyond the Milky Way. I think the movement of time may be a theme or image or motif or something in my novel. I can't wait to see what they have to say tomorrow.
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