Looking for Light

I am thinking, today, as I climb slowly, slowly back into the novel I had left suspended several weeks ago, about authorial voice, and its construction. Voice as tense, pace, tempo, slide. Voice in terms of flow and fuel. I am writing a three-narrator book, but I am also writing but one single book, and so as I sit here with this 72-page-start-of-a-novel on my lap, I judge the whole against the parts, ask if the parts make for a whole.

I dwell on sound. I dwell on what is flat, and broken.

It would be good, at a time like this, to imagine this encounter with fractions as an encounter with a stranger's work. To dis-remember the making of each page. To gain the benefit of surprise.

It can be difficult to light your way with the lamp of yourself.