Kelby’s in Sydney, the Sydney warmth . . . a reboot into plotting. My chapter 6 is now officially broken up into three chunks. This morning I stared blankly at my piles of notes and the successive iterations of summarisation that I called “the gist” and then “the gist of the gist” and then “the kernel.” I have to admit I had the thought: what was the point of all that prior work? Why can’t I cavalierly “just work it all out”?
I pace outside. Quirky Marrickville is at once thrumming and tawdry. I’m energised by all that muck-sweeping research work, conquered at long last, over the last month or longer. I mutter to myself and write out an exhortataion: “Fling a maelstrom. The gonzo.” I know, I grin to myself, I know I’m dabbling in cliche.
My basal self-yelling works. I sit down and I’m back straddling the globe over the late 1950s and early 1960s. I see clearly. My mind scalpels old ideas into plot. Today and tomorrow I hammer out plot cards, like movie scene instructions. Wednesday I begin drafting from January 1954. Right now I reckon it’ll be smooth.