Monday 08 July 2024
I have entered the two month-plus mark with my revisions. I started revision work on BOOK 2. Hence, I am entering the final or last phase of the Revision of my Katyn manuscript. I postponed working on BOOK 2 for this long amount of time because I wanted to get a better sense of the other revision work that I had completed with the other BOOKS. Because BOOK 2 functions—it is my intention to be such—as the manuscript’s “Introduction,” I needed to have a full vision the other BOOK revisions to know what to add or remove from the original BOOK 2 draft. Does that sentence make sense? I am not sure if I have conveyed how challenging this revision is. Maybe the holiday weekend’s distractions were an unconscious reminder of how emotionally draining the revision process, overall, has been.
Sunday 30 June 2024
Started revising BOOK 2, by which I mean creating new content. To be clear, I am saving parts of the original BOOK 2. The chapters I am cutting are good ones on their own; however, they veer too far from the intentions of the overall manuscript. While writing the original draft of BOOK 2, I found emotional comfort writing it. Along with the biographical section on Józef Czapski, BOOK 2 was among the first writing pieces I worked on after Steve’s passing. BOOK 2 and the Czapski chapter indeed are reflections of where I was at the time. Therefore, the thought of cutting BOOK 2 chapters seemed sacrilegious. On the other hand, those chapters scheduled for omission do tend to be off topic. For example, some sections dealing with overall Soviet crimes against humanity are important and revealing, how do they connect directly with Katyn or my personal journey? A question like this one is the focus of this revision for BOOK 2.
Another reason why I must revise BOOK 2 is its length. In its original draft form, it is the longest piece—more than the BOOK narrating both the summer abroad trip with the cadets and my personal visit to Katyn Forest. Thematically and structurally, having BOOK 2 as the longest, not directly related to Katyn, to say the least, was questionable. When I completed drafting BOOK 2, I thought I was being innovative making this book chapter the longest. Even when King Arthur read BOOK 2 for the first time—without the other BOOKS surrounding it—he strongly urged me that I must cut it down. When I completed the first draft of the entire manuscript, I didn’t revise or edit BOOK 2. I needed to see if BOOK 2 could still remain as it was with the other books. King Arthur repeated his hesitation over its length but suggested some minor cuts.
When we finished the editorial review in January, I felt then that BOOK 2 was unnecessarily long and overly complicated. I told King Arthur I might not just streamline it but rewrite it. He worried that by doing so, I would drastically change the feel of BOOK 2 and its placement within the manuscript. I assured him I would keep the more emotionally important sections but the WW2 historical lessons that bear no obvious connections to Katyn needed to be omitted.
Monday 01 July 2024
I had written a blog draft that offered my understanding of the Katyn Massacres. I hesitated publishing it on my webpage because I saw something in it that might have deserved to be placed in the Katyn manuscript. I hesitated to add it to the original BOOK 2 draft because I would have added several more pages, thus continuing the problem of having too much in BOOK 2. After January’s conclusion of reviewing the draft, I sensed that if I were to overhaul BOOK 2, then I would need to build around this blog draft.
The opening sequence of this blog draft talks about how I am not a historian by academic training but that I am a “literature” specialist. I started cleaning up this sequence. Another insight dawned: I need to clarify the Russian unwillingness to admit fully to the Katyn crimes. And so I started noting Putin’s equivocations on Katyn. Initially I didn’t get carried away adding this material; however, gradually I did. And I needed to take a break to reassess. On the one hand, all important stuff and relevant; on the other hand, sometimes, too much is too much.
This morning, I started writing this reflection in the hope that I would have my big revelation on how to complete this Putin section without writing too much. That insight hasn’t yet arrived. As I finish this entry, I think the best way to decide the Putin section’s fate is by working on it right now.
Tuesday 02 July 2024
Completed the Putin section in BOOK 2. Mindful of NOT getting carried away by writing more content about him. The same dilemma I faced while writing the section on those historians who tried to find original sources about Katyn in the Russian Archives. Putin plays a significant role in the Katyn story and WW2 history—so do the Russian Archives; however, my Katyn book isn’t a historical narrative of political actors—the book is about me. Therefore, striking that balance between enough information and too much is a delicate, not always obvious or easy process.
I thought about what Steve would say. Not only about how the manuscript turned out, but about writing those parts of it dealing with the historical and political. When he was alive, he knew that I went through terrible writer’s block. He knew that much of it was due to how I would address history, politics, Russian-Polish and Polish-Jewish relations in terms of WW2, Katyn, and the Holocaust. He marveled at how the manuscript was becoming a memoir, not an academic, analytical argumentative-driven book.
Wednesday 03 July 2024
Completed the “I am a literature professor” section—explaining how I understand Katyn. I pasted this new content (including the Putin and Russian Archives) to the new BOOK 2 chapter. Next: to go chapter by chapter in BOOK 2 and decide what to keep, revise, or cut. I told King Arthur I’m aiming to streamline BOOK 2 to no more than 60+ pages, not the over 100+ pages that the original draft is. If BOOK 2 is to be the so-called Introduction, then I need to be more disciplined in conveying an “introductory” message.
I think I need to take the printout of the original BOOK 2 and, using a pen, go line by line. Because BOOK 2 is so long, working off the computer screen, I think, will make it more difficult than it has to be.
Thursday 04 July 2024
Revising the opening paragraph of BOOK 2. The original paragraph discussed how I had no idea when I started my Katyn manuscript journey, how I would end up writing it. The original paragraph is good as it; however, I think I can improve it. King Arthur suggested I emphasize the emotional journey that became the manuscript be mentioned in the new, revised version of this paragraph. Heading into it, I thought writing this opening paragraph would be easy. I went through several different versions, until I settled for what I think is a good synopsis of the whole manuscript but also capturing the essence of multiple journeys I embarked on. I wanted to work further but too many distractions took me away from any more headway.
Friday 05-Saturday 06 2024
No revising took place—the distractions. Nonetheless, the emotional content of the ongoing revised BOOK 2 is affecting me. I am thinking more and more about a post-writing retreat. I definitely need one! I empathize more with Herman Melville when he was writing his novel, Pierre, the book he wrote right after Moby-Dick. Pierre isn’t his best work; however, not only was Melville upset with the unfriendly and mocking reception of his masterpiece, Moby-Dick, but he was also an overworked artist who took no real breaks from his creative process. He pressed onward to write Pierre. Of course, the aftermath of the poor contemporary reception of Moby-Dick and the hostility toward Pierre, “Bartleby, the Scrivener”—the major short story he wrote soon after Pierre—now stands out more when I think about Melville’s personal psychology. What if Melville had taken a year or two off from writing? I wonder if he had done so would he have walked away from writing?