It has now been more than six weeks since I have heard myself here when I begged off on a completed Chapter 4, The Laundress. I have done much more work on her behalf but something is missing. So I went back to the beginning of the novel and began a revision of Chapter 1 (now posted). It had started tapping me on the shoulder at night, joining all the other voices: “Should you really have put me out here? Do you really want the whole world to see me, to read this?” It is a bit intimidating to look at a blog’s statistical report and find that there have been viewers from Russia, Africa, Kuwait and several other countries; small numbers certainly, but even one is an unexpected surprise. I questioned my sanity.
I took courage in setting up this public format for a novel in progress from a poet who has become an unsuspecting mentor with a blog in which drafts of poetry are presented again and again with rewrites intact. I don’t think the technique is meant as a deliberate teaching tool - it is rather quirky but real - but I have made use of it as such for its many faceted inspirational qualities. Since a long narrative does not lend itself to showing all the revisions, I have posted Chapter 1 in a complete revised version.
I am thankful to Google for the opportunity to create this personal web log of my new learning experience at this late stage of my life; an intellectual hobby, solitary pursuit, fulfilling in the extreme.
All comments or questions are welcome.
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