For the past 10 days I’ve been observing Mr. and Mrs. Mallard from my balcony in an attempt at mindfulness. For months I’d heaped stress on myself: Gotta finish the first draft, gotta finish the first draft, an endless and exhausting mantra. In a comment to this post, “oh” hoped that I had returned to the manuscript after a bad day. Yep, but not in the same way. I needed to step back from the mantra.

     (Mr. and Mrs. Mallard arrived around
      March 4th, and my cat still thinks
      he can make a meal of them. –> )

Last week, I printed out my almost-completed first draft, read it, and am now revisiting various story threads. Back at about 120 pages (November posts) into the manuscript I went through the same exercise, and it helped immensely.

Gotta say, it feels good to use the revision part of my brain rather than the first-draft part of my brain. In an odd way, I find it relaxing, which has to be what a writing doctor would have ordered.

Funny thing is, I have three previous novels under my belt, and their endings arrived on mental silver platters: easy cheesy. So this situation is new to me. Probably why I was so stressed out. It might mean that I’m not as clear on the story as I thought I was. We’ll see! Another learning lesson under way.

( <– After going MIA for many weeks, Mrs. Mallard reappeared on Monday with her new family.)