I’m at that tentative stage. The exciting. mystifying stage of beginning a new novel. I dread what’s to come. The struggle to put manners on an idea that seems wonderful when it’s first scrawled on paper but has as many holes as a Swiss cheese. I dread the long hours, the obsessive thought process, the rewrites, the abandonment of sections and subplots I love but have become redundant to my story. I dread the effort of dragging my mind from the antics of imaginary characters