Procrastination

I spent two hours last night going back to the beginning of the second section and tweaking and re-writing with the full awareness that I'm not working on the little roadblock in the current narrative. I tell myself that it's better to get it right back in the beginning, but I think I'm just rationalizing.

The novel is in four parts. The first part, called Now and Then, is told in brief sections, jumping between December 1995 and the summer of 1980 when Richard met Bobby, told in the first person by Richard. The second part, Robert Holland Cramer, tells of Bobby's life in the third person yet from his point of view, the idea being that he has told the story to Richard, and Richard is re-counting it. The third part, The Class of 1981, is Richard's senior year of high school and his own life story. It's told in first person, as is the last part, Baker Street, the story of their life together up to 1995. You with me so far? Good...I'll need to refer back to this later, because none of this has been written down as an actual outline.

So where I am now is getting close to the end of the second part in the actual writing, and I've hit a little speedbump: an idea for a plot episode that I had and plowed ahead with for about ten pages is suddenly beginning to bother me. I usually cure these by going back and re-reading and revising a part that has nothing to do with the new stuff, so that's what I've been doing, hoping that the idea will resolve itself when I get back to it. If it doesn't, I'll gut it and start from that point all over again.

I wonder if that's considered as much a part of the writing process as the actual writing.

Page count as of last night: 805 (Courier 10 double space).