Well, maybe not “all,” but certainly the last chapter.
I spent much of this weekend working on a bridge chapter for the new novel, which I’ve tentatively titled Seven Ravens Rise even though that has nothing to do with the actual content of the story – everything needs to be called something, I suppose, at least until it earns its own name. (By “bridge chapter”, I mean a chapter designed to bridge two key events in the story, the space between big bullets on my (admittedly loose) outline – a chapter between a climax and the next great challenge, in which recent events have impact and consequence.)
Anyway, after foraging through 3000 words or so of chapter (things go more slowly these days than they did before I was employed full time), various plot threads crystallized in my head and I realized that, while the chapter I had written was fine, what this section of the book really needed was for me to roll back the 3000 words – my entire progress for the weekend – and start again, taking the bridge in a wildly different, much more efficient, direction. Moments like this are, in some respects, awesome: the story grabs you by the scruff of the neck and shakes you, saying, “It must be like this!” These days, though, with wedding and work clamoring for my time, it’s easy to get discouraged when I learn that two days of effort have been wasted.
But they haven’t been wasted, of course. You can only find the right path after taking many wrong ones. Even Sargent, as my painter friend reminds me, had to scrape off a head every now and again.
Of course, he also used to attack his canvases when the inspiration took him, shouting “demons! demons!” Maybe I should roll that into my writing process somehow.