A Long Rest.

It's been a long time since I've posted anything on my blog or at least it has felt like it. The gears have changed for me a bit over the last couple of weeks as I have been working solely on revision. My production output has been little in terms of new material but I have been spending hours listening to my head and heart trying to make sense of the story I am working on. It takes a whole different form of energy to come back and revise a piece and I'm finding it quite consuming. I tried last night to work on a new piece and it just didn't work out for me. I feel like I am too deeply submerged in the world of the story I am revising and it is coloring everything I put on paper in terms of new material.

I was given the advice that I should try and connect with my material on a deeper level in terms of the heart of each of the individual characters in my story and it is consuming work. I find myself swimming around in impressions that are not my own but rather things that I think the father in my story would feel, or Jack, the protagonist. There is also the "character" of nature and the external world that seems to be coming into play in this story and it needs further development as I work away at improving what is on the page. There is some kind of push/pull dynamic happening between the characters but also the outside world. The expansiveness of the world outside versus the limited scope of a singular human life. It's been heavy lifting for a while now but I think the story is slowly becoming infused with these thoughts and it is getting better.

My advisor this term is such a gentle and compassionate mentor and he really doesn't push in any specific direction but rather allows me to discover things on my own. Like I said earlier, his advice was to try and connect with the characters on an emotional level as I had captured their "psyches." Seems vague but it is exactly what this story was in need of and perfectly timed advice.

So, I don't know how often I will be posting in the coming days/weeks but just know that the imaginative life is still alive and pumping inside me, we are just out on a cross-country vacation right now and I'll only have Internet access sporadically.