Making an Imperfect 10

REVISION TRACKER:
CHAPTERS MARKED UP – 10
CHAPTERS REWRITTEN – 0
NUMBER OF TANTRUMS THROWN – 5 and holding

The house is a vacuum. A world spins beyond the window glass but nothing registers. She moves from chaise to bed to desk to random chair, always with a sheath of pages. Dog-eared. Red everywhere.

First drafts are always run-on imperfections. Nothing is a 10.

She is determined to stay in the imaginary world she knows so well. Render a thing whole when everyone else makes it a caricature. Because understanding is the key to destroying an enemy. This story will show gaggles of readers the way.

HINT: Writers must always imagine gaggles of readers at this juncture, even if it’s only three or five. Otherwise, what’s the point of slogging through word slop? So please humor the writer.

Midday, she allows herself an hour. Lunch with a friend. She reins in emotion, doesn’t talk about herself much, avoids being too intense about anything. And she especially does NOT talk about writing. She’s been flinging her intensity at the wrong things for too long.

She has fun.

But she has too much to scribble to take a long break. Characters pound the inside of her skull, rattle behind her eye sockets, threaten to commandeer her voice.

So she congratulates herself on an hour of light sociability. No good thing happens at once. Everything is changing her. She is becoming something else.

These words, this story, is key to her transformation.

Andra is on Medium discussing how American medical bias impacts women across the spectrum. She’s experienced this firsthand. PLEASE CLICK THIS LINK TO CLAP AND SHARE.

To see what Andra has been writing in series fiction, visit The Aftermath of Death, She Was Venus in Fur, Grief Out of Balance, For the Love of a Gun, Death by Toilet, Biscuits, Gardenias and a Funeral and Everything Dies.