Back home in Louisville, I checked in with my characters, especially Judith herself, to feel what she (and her world) need to come fully alive. Over the last ten days I've been revising . . . the first chapter of the novel. One slow pass, page by page, to make sure each new character is visible as a physical being. Another slow pass to insure that each one is located clearly in space. A third--and a fourth--to allow Judith's sense of faith to saturate all she says and does.
On one of the last posts here I wrote about my sudden (only several decades in the making) insight that revision needs no rushing, and in fact requires us to slow down. Now, as I live that, I cannot describe the joy of switching off my internal clock, the sense that I need to hurry in any way. I am a voracious reader, but for the last ten days or so my character's reality leaves me no time and little interest for other writers' stories. (Though I am compiling a list of books to read when I step out of the cave. Whenever that happens to be!)