A Writer's Notebook, Day One-Thousand-Two-Hundred-And-Eighty-One

I finished work on the draft for that short story.  I am feeling good about it, I think, but I want to let it sit a few days before I go back to mess with it at all.  It is always useful to put things aside for a while before revising.  The general structure feels to be there, but I know that I have a few things I want to work on, some details that might push it further.  I've got a deeper understanding of how I want the end to reverberate, but I am not certain how strong that is yet.  I think the title can do a lot of the work for that, creating a context that will make the ending echo.  It feels pretty complete as a piece, though, and I think it is only a little bit more work to really make it shine.  

I'm hoping I will have some time to get back to work on that essay tomorrow, as well, but I do have some appointments early, so I might not get to it straight off.  It is a big piece and I know it will be a lot of work, but I am excited about the possibilities if I get it right.  I've got to keep reminding myself that this first draft will probably be pretty bad, honestly, because I am still figuring out the core of the piece and how it should be organized.  I know what I am trying to get at, but the topic is complicated and involves a combination of personal and academic material, and has the potential to be a bit provocative and unsettling for some, and there is a lot of potential for the piece to go sideways.  I know it will take more than just getting it all out, but that is what I have to do right now, and then I can really make it work.  I am guided by two different professors of mine, one who said that the proper way to outline is to write the essay first, then outline it and write it again, and the other who told me not to worry about anything but saying what I needed to say, that I had already absorbed enough about how essays work to just trust myself and do the writing.  The point is to get it on paper.  Once I do that, I have so many options for ways to shape the material, to make what is there into what it really wants to and needs to be.

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