"The main challenge of researching and writing this book was learning to cope with the daily, relentless exposure to the horror of war ... " - P Dowding, Final Grant Report Excerpt, May 2024

Yesterday, I printed out the manuscript for my next book for the first time. It's a WWII story for middle-grade readers, still awaiting a final title (stay tuned).

Holding your printed manuscript for the first time is a big step and part of the process, but it's scary.

It's The Moment of Truth.

My writing process is always to take a story as FAR as I can on screen, then when I've got a real first draft with a beginning, middle, and end, I print it out. It's also a tipping point when I feel like I JUST can't look at this book on the screen anymore, because I can no longer see it, connect to it, love it.

So many questions as I start to read the printed, bound manuscript ...

Does this neural capture of symbols work? Do the symbols I assembled on the page in this particular order add up to something that is moving, interesting, reflective of my first impulse to assemble them? Will this particular assembling mean something to me, to others, and is it an assemblage that I can be invested in for all time?

And most important of all: Is this symbol assembly (all 230,866 of them) ANY GOOD?

Wish me luck friends!

This manuscript is the result of a Research and Creation Grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, thank you to them. For more about writing process and what it's like to get a grant like this then turn it into a story (does it work?), here's the rest of the blog post: https://phdowding.blogspot.com/2024/0...