After chilling on the book thing for a little while, I went back and started in on a basic edit. My goal at this point is simply to fix glaring grammatical errors and other signal noise that crept in while I was writing at a frenzied pace. "The thing," as I began calling in the early stages when I was still without a title, is amorphous and loose, like burned skin. Hard to tell if it'll heal into something fleshy and real or have to be sloughed off and replaced.

The plan was to run through a fast edit and then give the draft to three or four people whose opinions I value. Susan will get a copy, but despite her best intentions to give quality feedback, I believe she'd have a tough time telling me she thinks it deserves the shredder. So the remaining people are selected for varying degrees of separation from me, balancing the need to trust those to whom I give the thing with the need to have some unbiased feedback.

I'm about halfway through the edit, and my impressions are decidedly mixed. It seems likely that this will turn out to be more valuable as an exercise than as a finished product. I know I can write a complete book, 250 pages of a world constructed out of breath. Maybe not a very good book, this time around, but that's still a significant step. I'm pushing on through the edit, because that was the plan, but I'm debating whether or not to pass the thing on to my evaluators. It's just ego; I don't want someone to read something so rough, less than beautiful. Maybe that's what all first drafts are like. I've never done it, so I'm in a strange country. I always thought this would be the easy part -- having finished such a thing -- but it turns out to be just another step.

Meanwhile I have another idea and a smattering of characters for another project, a more elaborate and beautiful thing. They're all so untapped and potential that they shine out in comparison with the capped and contained lifelines of people in the book I wrote. They're like new loves, and I dream guiltily about them at night even as I know I should be paying more attention to the old familiar ones who stood by me for so long. I want to run away to their country. There's just so much work to be done here. I can't just abandon the old ones half-formed.