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progress on my novel

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

This weekend I concluded a major edit of the middle third of my old novel project. I've met my objectives of trimming out a variety of sub-stories and other clutter, and have (finally) incorporated the many, many edits suggested by the editor I was working with back in 2007. It was time to tackle the outline for the third section. So I copies the outline from WordPad onto a paper notepad, and set off to the cemetery to do the re-drafting. I wrote all of two sentences before the ink died in my pen. I'd been taking so many notes at work, and then the transcription. Dang! I rummaged around in my backpack and found my trusty Lamy fountain pen, which I bought in the early days of my first stint in Tokyo. I got about a sentence out of that before it, too, died. Opening my backpack again, I found the small packet of ink cartridges that I'd bought back in March when on my way to visit some friends. (This was in the "before times" when people did things like that.)

After I'd finished my work, I went back to my apartment, got the rice maker going, switched out of my shorts and walked into "Mouth of the gully" to see if the "Donqi" had any pen cartridges. To my delight I had a variety of colors and nib sizes to choose from. So now I'm writing with a spare 0.4mm nib in a nice blue.

Anyway, I've written a much tighter story. Maybe a bit too tight, I think that I still have to make some of the plot points a bit more work for the reader to get to.