Hunting the Evasive Theme

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.

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