The gutter needs fixed and there are new places to patch on the roof before winter. I'm itching to paint bright colors on the walls — soooooo tired of off-white, eggshell, and linen blah—but can't do that until sheetrock repairs are done. Oh, yeah, and there's some carpet I'd love to send on a permanent camp-out at the landfill.
Time doesn't agree with me. Time makes sure lessons of patience are thoroughly understood. So, I inch along such renovations rather than bulldoze through them. I'd rather bulldoze even if it looks messier for a while. But bulldozing usually illuminates some part of a project I didn't consider or didn't know was a problem until sub-surfaces revealed their not-so-shiny faces.
A particular writing project — chronicles set on a world called Kamanthia — seemed an excellent candidate for bulldozer editing. I love the story, the concept, the characters; but I followed some less than good advice. It turned into a thinly disguised sermon rather than a story. And though there were aspects of it I thought might be enjoyable for a Christian-only audience, those aspects diminished the impact and explorations of the core story. Those aspects might later wind up in a parallel side-story, but it'll be a separate project. Not this one.
Restoration time. Easy peasy, sure. Just remove the POV sequences of the Christian character (I'll call her S— for now) and bring the story back to the POVs of the original characters living on Kamanthia. Bulldozing went fine for the first four chapters as I simply lifted out S—'s chapters.
I hit the first boulder.
A scene vital to the story is told through S—'s POV. **deep breath** Most of it was dialog — not too hard to shift the POV to R—, the original main character.
The next boulder was bigger.
Again, a scene vital to the story, but this time descriptions and perceptions as well as dialog were in S—'s POV. Major rewrite.
The easiest solution would've been to simply pull up an archived file with the original story in it. Except for the fact that it's not possible. The original version is forever buried in a computer that died sadly and badly before I could move all its files to a newer computer.
I've learned a lot since the story's original version. I'm reasonably certain this restoration will result in a much better, more intense story. But it would've been nice to have the original for reference rather than relying on my own occasionally glitchy memory.
Parking the bulldozer. Inching my way through the landscape of Kamanthia.
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