Multiconstruct

thank you constant reader, i couldn’t have done it without you. I wrote the first draft of Up North a bit more than 7 years ago and it has languished in its little Mead Memo pad unread by anyone until now. I find re-writing/editing way harder than writing and it probably took about twice as long to re-write as write, and i didn’t even change it that much. I wrote it in the present tense writing most of it on the trip as you can tell in the context of the story. I hope you liked it as a serial. My next plans for it is to give it a third and probably final edit and put it out in Publisher as a novellette.

I have been captivated of my life as a novel since high school. I think i have written here that back then it dawned on me that there were two kinds of great writers. Those who have mastered the craft in the extreme and those who can write adequately but have lived a life that gives them something to say. I have been profoundly changed by taking that second path, even though i choose more to live my life than document it.

This was an experiment in trying to live a novel, really a short story. I was surprised how life accomodated to bring it a theme and leaving the protragonist changed as every short story does.

There is a school of counseling called Narrative Therapy. It teaches that we should think of our life as a novel. The trick is not so much looking back at what the protagonist has learned from the first part of the novel. Any thoughtful person can do thatl. The trick is to flip to the end of the book and see what that character has to teach us. The one that has it all figured out.

I have gotten some good verbal feedback on the story but no one has commented. Lets dialogue. Tell me what you think. What do you want to see more of? less of? again my thanks constant reader. Without you, this story would have only been told to myself. and of course the angels.