the fever and the resolution

it is sort of perverse to write about the resolution from inside the fever, but what I mean is this:

i sense something related to it hovering on the edge of my awareness, and i know that means that the only productive thing I can do right now is dream.

i’ll let you know when the dreams resolve.

it took until, I think, March 16th for the dreams to resolve. so that’s a season’s waiting, much as I often wish it were shorter. things take time. now the leaves are coming in and they hurt but they are so beautiful: devouring all the caches of sugar to reach for the light, because there will be more, there will be so much sunlight to eat.

it is harmful to bloom out of season; i know this. but the resting! it’s so hard. nothing is worse than resting.

so: the resolution.

the resolution was of three parts, a nice little braid that would not hold together until I had the last strand in place; and yes, of course, the last strand involved killing a darling. (beloved! i will always know you were with me, that you saw me through rough waters, that you opened the door to what the book wanted to be — and, alas, i had to abandon you to finish the journey.)

i’m fine, i swear, i’m fine.

Part One was: reducing one of the threats to a weapon, a worse threat in the hands of someone else, which is actually thematically resonant

Part Two was: increasing the plot involvement of my Evil Queen (the one perceived as the big bad)

and! Part Three was: altering the beginning to include significantly more tension as well as setting up the secret-bad as both very trustworthy and very powerful.

it’s… hard to explain all of this if you don’t know my book. but basically, after i figured out what my book was really “trying” to be i crafted a beginning that didn’t change very much for several drafts. i loved it: the reader began Nell’s journey with her the moment it truly started, halfway through the story, when she loses her memories and has to move forward on her own, with no grounding reality to guide her. you can, perhaps, see why this was hard to write — and very confusing to read.

so, yes, i cut it. and i started later, with Nell doing something that establishes a lot about the world, about who she is, and about the belief she has come to hold. (a belief which, by the midpoint, is utterly shattered). it’s much better, but oh, it was a painful thing to realize.

there was actually another change, almost as large, but completely unintentional: I altered when a certain “big secret” is revealed, because it turns out that exploring that tension is more interesting than just learning the secret itself. (this should be, like, broadcast back in time to younger-ayus: TELL THEM EVERYTHING!!!! well, okay, not everything, you can hold that one thing. but that’s it.)

i recognize this blog post is going to read like a pile of nonsense and that’s, well, that’s because i am in it. i suspect i will not be in it much longer because i’m also tired. but yeah, there will be another draft soon. god, i hope. i feel almost exactly how i felt in September 2021 which is cool! but also it’s extremely unsustainable. anyway, i’ll post again when i’m done.