Readings and Rewritings

So, here’s the thing.  I’m a writer.  I’m also a teacher/actor/singer/dance.  You would think that the last four would mean that I don’t get that heart pounding, stomach churning panic before I go up to read my work, right?  You’d be wrong.

For some reason, I can get up in front of 45 kids, hundreds of audience members, even over 1, 000 people and all I get is a little speed up of heartbeat.  For some reason though, when I read my own words it’s totally panic inducing. 

On the last day of January, Laurie asked me about reading.  The conversation went something like this:
“So, Christina, you’ll read next week, right?”
“Uh, sure.  I’m working on a prologue.”
“Great!  Read your prologue next week.”
“Uhhh…sure.”

So, this past Monday was the aforementioned “next week”.  I read the prologue after rewriting four versions 8 times a piece.  My writing was apparently “tight”, “poetic”, “beautiful”, and terribly confusing.  I gave too much information for people in my 876 words.  It was too tight and too poetic.  So, after talking to Laurie, I’ve decided to restructure.  Her parting words to me were: “Don’t make yourself crazy, doll.”  We both laughed at that.  She knew I was going home to get into the mind of a crazy man.  Crazy is as crazy does.

I’m keeping the first and last paragraphs for this prologue and putting the middle bit into the 7th prologue and dramatizing the Prophecy for this first one.  Which means that last night I dropped myself into the head of a man who goes crazy while making it.  It was all blood and ash and burning things.  Eyes and hair and glowing skin.  In an hour I wrote 2000 words, roughly.  I came out of it feeling like a nutter but I think my writing will be better for it.

Now to get on to the editing, tightening, and poetic-ing of a crazy man’s Vision.  Gotta love being a writer.  I get to literally write both the end of the world and the saving of it in a chapter.