Squaw Valley post no. 3

After lunch I went to the one-on-one conference every writer gets. The staff member assigned to me, Carol Edgarian, began by asking me where the story of my novel in progress was going, and I immediately began blathering about Bangalore and yoga. She said, "Oh, then is this the prologue?" I looked down at the ms. she had, and realized that she had the ms. I had submitted with my Squaw application, the first several pages of the book, not the chapter from the middle of the book which is going to be workshopped by my group tomorrow. I've been so focussed on that chapter and people's possible reactions to it that I had completely forgotten I had submitted the novel's opening chapters with my application.

Once we got that straightened out, she became convinced, and in fact convinced me, that the whole San Francisco section of the book -- the 40 pages I wrote last November, which cover Stella's job at the bank in SF and how she ends up getting sent to India -- should actually be cut to a single scene, that "the story really starts in India."

Having seen so much material already this week in which the first paragraphs amounted to throat-clearing and should be cut, I readily accepted this suggestion, and wrote down her other questions about what my main character’s desires and strengths were -- valid questions all, and typical workshop questions, but not ones I had really pushed myself to consider yet.

Now I wonder if I should rewrite the beginning, according to this single-scene suggestion, before my writing group in Berkeley begins to look at the book -- or leave it the way it is, and see if they feel the same way.