Not much to say, just that the resolve remains. I've been making progress on the Drum revision, albeit very slow. But working methodically through the copy, I see the need to bring more focus into the drama of each scene and the purpose of every scene to the overall story. Deeper still, there is the need for discernable ironic tension. The stakes need to be clearer.
What is missing from the novel at this point is cohesion between certain older chapters (Jade as a girl) and the rest of the story that came later. I'm thinking of pulling together a graphic of how this story should fit together. However, elementary "storyboarding" is, it actually seems to be a legitimate approach at this stage in order to piece this thing together. A visual representation that Jade herself employs!
Also, since Seamus (websleuth) is the instigator of Jade's decision to act, he needs to be pulled into the light a bit more. He needs to be seen as someone whose conviction that he has the M&C story nailed drives his need to have Jade come along, be convinced that his Jane and John Does are in fact Jades' M&C. Jade is torn: she wants to believe, desires in fact for this to be the case to end for once and for all the mystery; but she is more than a little attached to the M&C mystery. It has defined her, lent substance to her identity. Without this disappearance--this void--in her life, she would be unhinged, harborless. And yet, her addictions are a testament to this great sadness already. Jade is deeply enmeshed in a catch 22 and this needs to be clear to the reader by the end of the first third of the book.
It needs to come into focus, this paradox, along with Jade's challenge to realize her own personhood--head on. Her present needs to come into accordance--be reconciled--with her past. The sections with Michael and Cordelia sailing and Jady visiting are strong, but they have to serve a purpose toward this reconciliation. Although Jade struggles with contemporary life, a parallel struggle resides in her fixation with the past. Her increasing disfunction, both professionally and emotionally, should be tied specifically to what she puts together of her past and takes action to combat in the present (spurred on, of course, by Seamus).
This is why the Seamus character is necessary: he represents the threat to Jade's dependence on her childhood loss, the life project she has made of it. Seamus presents her with the challenge ultimately to move on with her life. Seamus, or rather the glove he throws down, is the hinge pin upon which Jade's life opens or closes. I've been told by reviewers to remove or greatly enhance the Seamus Character. I think doing the latter will bring this book into sharper focus.
In many respects, Drum is not only a story of the difficulty of letting go; it is a journey from inaction to a state of action, from psychological paralysis to proaction, bondage to freedom. The ironic backdrop is the very fact that those people who represent this rite of passage for Jade are those whose disappearance binds her to the past. By idealizing the boldness and eccentricity of M&C's alternative lifestyle, Jade, by the time the novel begins, has denied herself her own development as an individual. Leveraged against this irony is the central theme for Drum, the possibility of freedom through reconconciliation of the past.
All of the above, of course, is my own experience and my own journey. By spelling it out in autofiction, I am allowing this theme to flourish in ways that would actually lose authenticity if I were to write a memoir bound to the facts. If this sounds strange, it is because I bring to the story of Drum what an historian brings to myth: a balance of the known against the unknown. It is in this way that I am giving myself the very emancipation that I so idealize(d) in Michael and Cordelia.
All idealization is mythical. The story of Drum is, in the classic sense of the word, a myth. It contains essential truths that need to be unearthed, for their significance to be appreciated and for new questions to be raised in the present light of day.
