I once again changed the title of my novel-in-progress. It's now called Three Studies of Love, but that may change before long, too. I'm having more trouble titling work than I used to.
Also, I've taken a break from writing it. It's too painful to work on for large stretches the way I have my last few books. It's painful, hard to write so truthfully about such difficult things.
Love is the most significant subject we can give our attention. And I'm writing three intertwined sections for the novel that can be best summed up like this:
Love Lost
Love Destroyed
The Absence of Love for Lust
It's just too hard to work on right now. I started it the first of September and wrote just under 150 pages and then cut t to 90 pages during a single two-hour work session and then set both those drafts aside as what I've started calling "pull drafts" and started over. I'm 20 pages in now and I'm just exhausted. And sad and grieving and guilt-shattered and overwhelmed and dragging my confidence along like a broken toy.
But I always keep a couple novels or collections going for times like this, because a lot of my writing is dark and stormy. I picked up one back up I'd started last year called Green Mother. It's a folk horror novel set in eastern Kentucky. And, best of all, I don't find myself crying uncontrollably while writing it.
/
“We’ll never survive!”
“Nonsense. You’re only saying that because no one ever has.”
— William Goldman, The Princess Bride
