Sunder: Day 46

You build a novel the same way you do a pyramid. One word, one stone at a time, underneath a full moon when the fingers bleed.

-- Kate Braverman

I can't even begin to describe how successful tonight was.  It was as if the last three weeks had built up to a critical mass and it finally exploded tonight.  I made some real progress on the synopsis, weaving existing threads and even laying down some new threads that (if I do my job properly) will keep readers guessing about what's really going on.  In all, I was able to finalize the prologue, all of the first movement and the opening sequence of the second movement.  Major, major progress.  K and I will have much to discuss tomorrow afternoon; in fact, I may suggest that we sequester ourselves in the basement to better focus our minds.

Outdoor adventurists look for this kind of thrill in mountain climbing or white water rafting or skiing down virgin slopes.  Stock brokers probably get it from a big score on the market.  I get it from this--from working and working and working on Sunder until the heat builds up and the raw iron begins to glow and take shape under every hammer strike.  I have missed this feeling so much that I despaired of ever feeling it again.  The story has begun to come together in a way it hasn't before, not even in the productive months before my hiatus and shoulder injury.  It is taking solid form in my mind.  In the same way that the interior landscape of The Wheel itself is beginning to reveal itself in my maps, the action of the plot is beginning to congeal in the synopsis. 

Now is the time when my legs must not flag.  Even when my arms scream and my lungs burn, I must not fail.  I must keep hauling stones across the desert in the night to my pyramid.