Sometimes Our Job is Just to Witness

In life and in fiction.

Hi friends.

I’ve been running around the past few days doing non-writing-related things including my stupid fucking taxes (I wish there were some other way to refer to them but sadly there is not), but that hasn’t stopped my brain from still chewing on this novel. When I woke up this morning I started to make my way through the mess of emails I’ve sent myself containing scattered sentences, paragraphs, and ideas. Today I’ll play surgeon with all of them and figure out how to make room for them within the body of the novel.

I'm not going to lie, while some of them are hopefully going to be deftly inserted, others are going to get highlighted with yellow and a “Fix this later” note attached. Or maybe they won’t even make the final cut at all, and I’ll just end up deleting some of them entirely rather than deal with it. But sometimes you just have to write it all down, and then you can decide.

But cut me some slack, it’s Sunday, and yesterday I went to a memorial service. And I went to a memorial service last week, too. Lately I have been a witness to feelings, both mournful and celebratory. Sometimes that’s our job as a person: just to witness. When I got home last night I was finally able to catch up thinking about it all and take a few notes on it.