Provincetown 21

I stayed up all night making changes to the manuscript. It always takes longer than I think it will. I crawled into bed early this morning and slept like a rock all day. I got up with incredible energy, walked to the PO, stopped by Far Land Grocery, and came home ready to tackle the writing again.

It was a beautiful evening. It was clear and very cool. It will be in the fifties tonight, my kind of weather.

The process of shaping and reshaping a narrative is a wondrous thing.

A young student of mine, upon receiving a post card from me, said the card had made him want to burn down his house and make for Cape Cod. I wrote him back and said by all means he should.

There's no better literary symbol of starting over than the burning down of one's house.

So often when you're writing, you just have to start over. As you retype, you also rethink and you deepen the story and the voice of the story. There's so much you want to hold onto because you've come to feel close to it, but it's poison to do that. You have to let it go.

As in life, sometimes you just have to burn down your house and start over.