Rewrite: Day 36. Nearly at the top.

I compiled Chapters 17 and 18. This takes me past the mid-point of the novel but I have not yet reached the top of the mountain. As I wrote the other day in one of my 750 words exercises:

I am almost at the top of the hill. In another day or so I will pass the pivot point and start the long descent to the end. From here I can survey all of my creation, the whole story. I can follow the route I have come, climbing up to this point and I can look forward to the descending path. Perhaps I have arrived here in company of my characters, a garrulous band, chattering and joking as they explore the Trig Point and the Cairn, those monuments, memories in stone, the evidence that others have passed this way before. Or perhaps I come alone, no sounds but the raven croak and the mewling of a buzzard spiralled on thermals, and the wind. perhaps I am alone with the mountain top and the rocks and sky, covered by the shadows of passing clouds, exposed by the sun, swept by the winds that come from any point of the compass. It is a heady moment. I sit down and lean my back against the rock. Yes, I have climbed here to commune with God, to receive testaments of stone and with them to descend, bringing word to those below.

Fanciful, maybe, but true in the sense that I can see what I am doing from up here near the top of the story and I feel in command. There is still a lot of work to do! I will be revising from the beginning as I push on towards the end and I have revised Chapter One, added a little, rearranged, and brought it better into line with the story I am trying to tell.

Ends