I felt so symbolic yesterday…

I feel I’ve turned a corner, made a circle back.

Circles have odd personal symbolism for me. I am drawn to their forever quality, their symmetry, their perfection.

I remember being amazed when my mother told me that Leonardo DaVinci could draw a perfect circle freehanded. I don’t know if that’s true. I certainly can’t, although I can write in mirror image as he did. A bizarre skill I discovered when my junior high school class was instructed to try it during an art history lesson.

But circles also became the miserably acknowledged symbol of my relationship with my long-ago boyfriend. He was my first real love– my first everything. And I was in deep smit from the get-go, while he kept thinking things would get better.

We came together and broke apart many times during our dysfunctional courtship, and would talk about the “next time” the circle came around whenever we went our separate ways. Thus, circles became a simultaneous symbol for hope and heartbreak.

That is one circle I am glad to say had an end. And happily married, my relationship is linear now so I can redefine my personal symbols. Despite the misery once associated, I am fond of circles again. 🙂

And the circle I feel I’ve recently made holds no malice. I don’t know what exactly let me find my way back to writing after so many years without time or inspiration. But through this novel-writing journey and the people I’ve met along the way, I feel I’ve actually found my way back to poetry.

I can’t explain what that means to me. I haven’t even written anything new, but I’ve discovered a part of myself that had gone missing in these poems I dug out of my basement.

It’s good to be back.

Scene Together

I am so close to finishing I can taste it! I just finished editing Chapter 33, which was the major scene I needed to add. I’ve got to go back and review it later to see how it fits after a little distance, but I think it worked out well.

Seven chapters left on the second edit, and then one more quick time through for some minor things (I need to do some global document searches for words that I overuse. This includes my characters’ names, as I tend to identify them more than necessary).

I still need to add in a brief scene for the final chapter (and a detail I recently thought of to an existing scene). I also am considering an epilogue, or just extending the ending.

Either way, I am close to having a complete-enough manuscript to print my copy and mail out query letters. And that is amazing.

Also amazing is some feedback I’ve had recently from one of the people who is critiquing my novel. He has started to talk about the symbols and themes in my novel, which gives me loads of warm fuzzies. It is so exciting to have someone find the details you weave into your story.

Which reminds me yet again of how grateful I am to my awesome legion of test writers, whether they are Chitties or CC Critters. You guys rock!