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[readingredhead]

Finally did the full read-through of 2011's NaNo-novel, Chasing Ghosts, and ugh. I am actually a little too in love with it. I have this overwhelming feeling that there are tons of things wrong with it (the plot structure totally rips off large chunks of Possession, I have not read enough eighteenth-century private correspondence to know what personal letters really looked like, it does not have anything like an ending and I still don't know how it will end) but I can't help being so excited with every bit of it. It is perhaps a story that only its mother could love, but for once I feel like I'm actually following through on a lot of the smarter versions of the "write what you know" dictate: namely, "write the story only you can write" and "write the story you always wanted to read but no one else has written for you." This novel has everything that I want in a novel...or it will, at least, when I am finished working with it. It will take a lot of work -- a lot of hard work -- but it's work that feels worthwhile. Not since my first re-read of The Printer's Tale have I felt this way about a NaNo-novel. I mean, I've really liked the ones I've written in the past four years, but none of them have been as necessary as this one.

I think I have a summer writing project now...
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