Will draft 3 ever come to an end?

So I am nearly at the end of this draft – the third. THANK CRIPES.

Don’t get me wrong, I am thoroughly enjoying writing, but the next book is starting to knock on my door with a lot of force that I want to get stuck into it. Sure, I could multi-task, write them both, but I ain’t made that way. My entire body has been overtaken by the current book. I have to wait until I’m finished and then I need a serious exorcism. If only Jason Miller were still around *sigh*.

Draft three has been all about entering corrections, restructuring and fact checking. It’s been a long process.

And, what am I writing?

I’m ghostwriting an autobiography; I say “ghostwriting”, but I’m actually co writing, really. Simonne Jameson is a Holocaust survivor who spent three years, from the age of twelve, locked up in the cellar of the Paris National library by her local police. She was raped daily, sometimes she had more than one visitor a day, and sometimes they were brutal. They brought basic food, comics, sometimes lollies. 

She was surrounded by books and rats, no natural light, no clean clothes other than what she had on. By the time of the Liberation of Paris and her release, she had tuberculosis and weighed 37 kilograms. She had never entered a Nazi camp; her tormentors were her own people, the French men who lived in her quarter.

Despite this crazy start to life, Simonne, who was born Simonne Levi, has marvelled at life, taking it into her own hands and living it in a way most of us can only dream of. Simonne has been married four times, has five children (one of whom she adopted when she was 50), has been in the theatre,  travelled the world, studied psychotherapy under Carl Jung, has known Picasso, Dali and Chagall, has been an art curator (and still is), and a child counsellor. Did I forget anything? Probably.

So, while I’m looking forward to having this manuscript finished, I can’t imagine a day when it’s no longer echoing in my head.

I guess that’s writing.