Gretchen Hummel

It’s 4 in the morning.  I can’t sleep.  Too tied up in emotional knots of one sort or another.  Excruciating day of editing today.  I’m reworking the first three chapters to try and implement suggestions made by my tough and invaluable friend/critic, Alison.  I spent 3 hours on a few paragraphs and still came away feeling unsatisfied.  It will come eventually, if I work at it hard enough/long enough.  It does get a little overwhelming, however, thinking about doing this for 400 pages.  It will be the third edit through.  Arghhhh!

I’m reading a wonderful book, the prose is achingly beautiful.  I can’t believe I haven’t read this before, it’s an old book–Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry.  I have a nice treat for my reading hours over the holidays.  I eat it up and I’ve had to look up some new words, which I love doing.   I’ll have to put in a few quotes, fabulous analogies–like the sound of thunder–coal falling down a shoot, the savage scribble of lightning in the sky–I drool.   

The book has been finished for about a month. Hurray! I say finished, but with a novel, well, there is always more that can be fixed.  I have it out to a few beta readers at the moment who are reading the thing as a whole.  One in particular I’m anxious to hear from.  Her standards are so high, however, that I don’t dare hope for too much.   Even a nod of approval would be sufficient.  I should prepare myself for that and only that, I know.

I have since heard from the above-mentionned highly valued reader.    She liked it!  With suggestions, of course.  There’s no reason for secrecy here.  Her name is Alison Baker, an O’Henry Award winner and if you haven’t read her work, you should.  How I Came West and Why I Stayed, I thought was especially wonderful.  We’ve been friends now for over 20 years, met in a writing group in SLC led by Francois Camoin, chairman of my thesis committee for my MFA and author of The End of The World is Los Angeles.