Renewal: Baumholder 1961

Just reread my pages on the Cold War novel-in-progress, and there's good news and bad news. The good news is I love the first seventy pages. I wouldn't change a thing. The bad news is that in the last several weeks of my last dance with this material, I made a major change in the story strategy, which begins to be reflected after page 70 -- and this material sucks. I started getting artsy fartsy cute in the telling and the story takes a back seat, suffering greatly. This story can carry its own weight, it doesn't need any pseudo-artistic help. So I'm throwing away everything after page 70 and keeping in the same straight-forward realistic narrative mode. But those first pages are hot, exactly what I want them to be. If I can keep the tone and if the rest of the story develops as well, I'll have something. But it's definitely something to get writing on again.