meredithdias.com

Periphery - Meredith L. Dias

In 2007, with the help of a few friends who went beyond the call of duty for me, I self-published Periphery, my first ebook. It is currently undergoing massive revisions (read: a total overhaul) to make it submission-ready. Some days, I am convinced that this would have been easier if I had just started from scratch. Adding a second point of view has become a Herculean undertaking, as has rewriting storylines that were either underdeveloped or too inherently shallow to pursue.

It’s interesting to flip through the ebook version and ponder 1) just how much the story has changed/intensified since 2007, and 2) how much I’ve learned about the craft of writing thanks to my year-long book binge. It has made me more daring, more experimental, less “safe” in my narrative approach. To paraphrase something a reviewer on Goodreads said in his review of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, there is a difference between a novel and a book. In my estimation, a novel is more methodical, more linear in approach. A book experiments, takes risks, makes a bold statement. Periphery will likely be a novel, but it is my goal to write a book in this lifetime (even if the manuscript never sees the light of day). Experimenting with future tense, first-person plural and second-person perspectives, and language itself has opened me up considerably.

I’ll keep you posted on my progress in the blog!