Reflection 5: Evolving The Metanovel

Evolution!

Inheritance, variation, selection, iteration. Each new draft inherits its content from the previous draft; I imagine and I make changes—a sentence here, a word there, a new section here, a removed section there; I select the changes that I like, and delete or re-change the ones I don’t; I iterate and I’ve evolved a new sentence, a new chapter, a new prologue, a new epilogue, finally a new draft. Inheritance, variation, selection, iteration. My metanovel is evolving.

And so am I. Decision, imagination, and practice, practice, practice are bringing my metanovel into existence and transforming it—and transforming me as well. I am using self-referential metanovel writing to transform myself from an undisciplined self-referential-metanovel-non-writer to a disciplined self-referential-metanovel-draft-writer and -draft-editor, over and over. Can I use that same process to transform myself in other ways?

What are the limits to self-evolution, to self-transformation?

What else is possible?

It was too much for me to consider in this Reflection. I’d need to evolve another one. Later.

Right now I had more editing to do.

More Editing

“Good!” said my metanovel. “You really need to do more editing. You need to get me finished. You need to stop thinking about those other things.”

“What other things?” I asked the metanovel.

“The other things in your life that you’re now thinking of changing with decision, imagination, practice, practice, practice,” said the metanovel.

“It was just a passing thought,” I said.

“Think it later,” said the metanovel. “Right now let’s get things moving.