I had stupidly been hoping to have it ready enough to submit to the Pulitzer committee for consideration. Talk about hubris...I have the barest command of English grammar and composition and I'm arrogant enough to try for the preeminent prize in American Literature.
It was an artificial deadline I was hoping to meet...but it's not going to happen. Their drop-dead date is in three weeks, and I would be doing Brendan's story a huge disservice if I pushed it through, that soon. It's just not going to be ready.
I go on flights of fantasy, like that. Dancing along in my dreams of being told I'm on the same level as Hemingway and Cheever and Faulkner and such. But that sort of nonsense damages my focus on the story. I add moments in to be noticed and applauded, and not because they belong.
Like that primal scream I'd so eloquently added for Brendan, at the end of this volume. It was an actor's moment, not a real, honest character's. I've seen so many films and plays where that happens and it always puts me off. I think I'm probably the one person in the world who was not affected by Meryl Streep's scream near the end of Sophie's Choice. So why was I doing it here?
I think that's what I lost sight of in A Place of Safety. It tends towards silence, and I keep trying to pump up the drama. There are explosive moments, sure...like when Brendan is bound to a tree and whipped for dating a Cajun girl...but even that ends quietly with him having a near heart attack and scaring them into stopping.
So I guess half my procrastination issue was coming from that idiotic deadline, and I'm removing it. This section will be done when it's done. When it's together in the way it wants to be.
I just hope I can keep enough control of myself to allow that.
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