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

I am hoping to finally get the prose essay printed out tomorrow so I can really begin the process of organizing it and editing the whole thing into a more cohesive version.  In addition, I am certain that a good deal of what is there will be easily removed.  A lot of what I have written is not directly about the central subject, and goes very deep into things that could just be touched upon, if mentioned at all.  A friend of mine who has read some of it suggested that I put together two different versions: one that is shortened into an essay and another that has become a full length book of its own.  I am not certain that I agree about the idea of turning it into a solo volume, though it is already far too large for most publications (at least fifty pages thus far).  I suspect it may become more than one piece, perhaps, but I know that I need to start by pulling together a general version of the piece that pulls the major points together in a tighter and more coherent package.  My approach, as I have mentioned, has largely been to just riff on various ideas, writing about each aspect on its own and without consideration of how it fits together.  That is all fine for drafting, but now it is time to pull it together.  To be honest, this is probably not going to be the hardest part.  That is going to be creating a bibliography and citations.  I really wish I had done better at keeping notes on those things.

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