chapter thirty-one: christian wall

I finished chapter 24 and read it and chapter 17 to P a couple of nights ago. The novel starts in chapter 3, then skips seven chapters to pick up the next part.

Chapter 31 is the last part of this section before the chronological storyline goes back to chapter 4 and picks up there in seven chapter intervals. The section to follow that is chapter 2, then chapter 1, chapter 6, chapter 5, and finally chapter 7, each storyline moving through the novel seven chapters apart.

It may sound confusing, but it all makes sense in my head.

P made dinner for us and before I started to read, I asked if she wanted to hear chapter 17 or only chapter 24, the one I had just completed. She hadn't heard chapter 17 before, but I wasn't sure how much time we could spend together, since it was getting late in the evening. I looked to see how long each chapter was and discovered that chapter 17 is seventeen pages long and chapter 24 is twenty-four pages long. P said, "Is that another clever little thing you're doing in your novel?!" I have all kinds of things going on in the way this novel is constructed (like the non-chronological order) but I don't think this is one of them; I couldn't possibly condense chapter 1 to one page! (Though that sounds like a fun way to write a future novel...)

I decided after I finished the first draft that august chagrin felt a bit rougher than I wanted, so I'm going back through the whole thing and "rewriting" it chronologically, to make sure the story flows. It seems like it was a good idea. Chapter 24 was already written, as are most chapters, but had to be changed somewhat - as had the chapters in this storyline before it because I inadvertently changed the date of chapter 10 from 1973 to 1977, changing the ages of the main and secondary characters. That turned out to be a good change (since a sexual awakening is better at age 14 than 10), so I altered the chapters that followed to go along with this change.

Chapter 31 hadn't been written when I finished the first draft - there are a couple of chapters that need to be created so that each of the seven storylines has exactly five parts - and looking at the thing overall, at first I felt a bit overwhelmed by the idea of having to write more story. Not that I don't know what is supposed to happen in chapter 31 or the other chapters that have to be added. But then, after reading chapters 17 and 24 to P, it seemed simple how I would get into the next part.

I'm often surprised how the story comes to me. I find myself walking around in silence, making breakfast, washing dishes, doing laundry, or sometimes working, typing transcriptions (my job), my mind busily toying with the story, slowly coming into focus. That's how it was this morning. Chapter 24 ends the summer before Randy Reardon goes to college. There's a brief connection wrapping up chapter 24 at the beginning of chapter 31 (as there was a a connection from chapter 17 to 24, from 10 to 17, and from 3 to 10), and then it just flows from there.

I haven't been drinking coffee regularly since the beginning of February. I've been drinking black or green tea, mostly. But a couple of times I've had coffee, just because I need the extra kick. Last weekend, I went to a coffeehouse to work on chapter 24 and had coffee and a cinnamon roll and my work poured out of me easily. This morning, I woke up at 5:30, finished a transcription that was left over from last night, and then there was no work to be done - thankfully - so I poured myself a cup of coffee after breakfast and started in on chapter 31:

The first plane that tried to take Diamond and me home from Las Vegas faltered soon after it got into the air. The pilot told us in a steady voice that there was nothing to worry about - "a little engine mishap!" - but turned around and took us back to the airport to get a different plane. Diamond pretended to be asleep, even as we deboarded the broken plane and boarded a new one, wouldn't speak to me, so I made a silent promise to myself that if we got home alive, I would never get on a plane again.

Randy doesn't see Diamond again that summer until she's heading off to Denton, Texas, to go to music school, and shortly thereafter, he's on his way to Gainesville, Florida - only twenty-five miles but far enough to be a world away - to study theater at the University of Florida. He arrives at his dorm a week before his roommate and spends his third and fourth days alone at his desk writing his very first story, "Diana's Tallywacker," based on his first adult sexual experience which took place in Sin City, which is the name (and subject) of chapter 24.

I'm enjoying this.