Of Collages and Collapses

In honor of finishing my first first draft of a novel ever, I took a vacation from writing for a week.

It was terrible.

I have been anxious, tired, confused, and constantly beset by this nagging feeling that I'm not doing something I should be doing. I've also been remarkably unproductive in all other aspects of my life, including revising my statement of purpose, getting my recommender forms to a professor and studying for the Literature GRE. Clearly, I need to be writing again.

The boyfriend printed out the entire draft of The Wedding Widow on his computer at work (the little desktop one was not going to be able to handle this). It's so thick! And big! I regret sounding like a porn star, but it really is! So exciting.

I have also made my first writing collage and derived far too much pleasure from doing so. I always loved cutting out paper dolls when I was younger, the more complicated the better. I had way too much fun cutting all around the tiny little prongs of a diamond comb in a magazine last night.

Of course, due to the cropping of catalogue photos, most of my characters look like victims of an accident with a land mine. I had to artfully drape the skirt of another woman's dress entirely over Calla's poor absent legs. At least she looks quite fetching in her sea-foam green lace trimmed cashmere sweater from Nordstrom's.

Now comes the tough part...figuring out what any of this means. What message is my subconscious blaring to me through this medium? Damned if I know. I'll upload a picture of the finished product later tonight and see if anyone else can make sense of it...