I am having so much fun with my Self Storage revisions. It's cool to revisit the story after being away from it awhile--I can see it much more clearly now (and I mean that in two ways--I have more detachment, more objectivity, and that brings so much clarity into the process, but I also am able to actually visually see the characters, the setting more clearly. When I first write a draft, I write in a sort of white heat, and sometimes the people and the landscape blur as I race past them through the story. Now I can slow down enough to see the world in a more dimensional way.)

Part of me wishes I had written the book earlier so I could have taken advantage of this being the 150 year anniversary of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (since the book plays a large role within my book.) But everything else about the timing of this book has been so amazing, I have absolutely nothing to complain about. And I'm fulling enjoying Whitman's sesquecentennial. I was happy to read about this new Leaves of Grass exhibit at the New York Public Library; especially this line in the article: "As ever with Whitman, the goal is an open, perceiving, feeling self..." Thanks to Whitman, that's pretty much the goal of Self Storage, too.