I’ve been flying through stage one of my revision, and now… I’m down to about forty pages left. That’s forty pages of the ones that have been typed. I might try to track down a few more in the handwritten cesspool that is my notebook, but really… I have enough to give the book some shape, and what I need might not be there, anyway.

I’m still more enthusiastic about this revision than I was about the one that stalled out. I was more enthusiastic about writing the thing, too.

Themes, it seems, are important.

Before any of my teachers get too excited about that statement, I’d better add that I really don’t have the faintest idea what those themes are, until I start revising, and I’m pretty much good with other people believing the books are about explosions.

But I can feel when something’s missing, and if I don’t know what it is… it’s usually a problem with theme.

It also happens to be one of the areas I was most resistant to, since always. I mean, hell. I like butterflies, but that doesn’t mean I want to pin them down. Theme is sorta the same way. I miss it when it’s gone, but I don’t want to spend all that much time psychoanalyzing it.

I think I might have to start over from the beginning to get the other novel right. I’m not sure if I’m interested enough to do that. I like the characters, I like the general plot… but something’s not right.

I suspect that the exact moment the thing turned off course was when I decided to focus more on one character, and veer away from the ones I started with. Now, why can’t I ever notice the cliff before I fall over it?

I suppose, I could sit down and make a list of recurring themes, if I were clever. … if I were clever.