Flintstone-ing

Revising. Man oh man. So, you remember how Fred Flintstone drives his car? How, after he leaps in, he has to scrabble his feet for a while before the car finally starts moving?

Recently I realized I've been doing some of that as I revise this novel.

It's been going well. Sorta. That is, I've been making lots of changes. After the initial surgical removal of an entire plot line, the word count has been rising and falling as I cut and replace and expand and lop again.

But. Have I made progress? Yes! and no. I completed several large tasks and tracked the ripples through the rest of the chapters. After that, my activity took the form of messing around making smaller changes, without actually addressing the crucial big revisions that represent the necessary, exciting, and scary improvement to the last two-fifths of the book.

But I didn't know that I was stalling. After all, I was working every day, changing words! Adding them! Cutting them! See? Progress!

Last week I met a writer for a "parallel play" work session, and we started with a status: an "I am here" statement. Without necessarily meaning to, I articulated a. that I was avoiding the second half, b. why I was avoiding the second half (more or less) (beyond "it's scary," which is a given) and c. why I really really wanted to stop avoiding the second half.

And somehow, my brain heard that as "Hey, there's a problem; let's start conjuring some solutions." All kinds of possibilities have suddenly appeared for the second half of the book, most of them focused on that last two-fifths. Now all that remains ("all") is to implement those ideas. (Which I am actually doing. Yes! Progress!)

All it took ("all") was the right setting, the right time, and a trusted listener.

And perhaps a few days or a week of Flintstone-ing ahead of time. Or who knows, maybe those days weren't strictly necessary. Or maybe they were this time but won't be in the future. But now I know I might need to ask myself whether it's time to pick up my feet and just let the car just go.