Latest On My Novel Redwood Summer

I’ve been writing and rewriting my San Jose novel on and off since April of 2000. Each draft took months or years to write, but gradually each rewrite took a shorter time to complete. The rewrite before last took over three months.

The last one took only three days.

I began the rewrite on the evening of April 11 (after watching premiere of TWENTY, a movie I co-wrote) and by April 14 I had traversed the entirety of Redwood Summer. As slow and methodical as I write, that is light speed. It has taken so long to write this project because I began with no characters, plot, or any kind of story line. All I had was a long gestating idea of writing a novel about my hometown. I began by writing a series of unrelated set pieces, then main characters and a story arc about love, friendship, and how outside forces shape our lives began to emerge.

Between 2000 and 2012 I wrote six or seven drafts before I solved the vexing problem of how to begin the novel. I split the last chapter in half and made them the first and last chapters to frame the story, and all the middle chapters are a flashback. I also came up with the current title at that time. First title was Running Uphill, then on draft #2 I changed it to Heart’s Delight (after Valley of Heart’s Delight, the former nickname of Santa Clara Valley when it a capital of agriculture). Redwood Summer was an actual event in 1990 to save the redwoods and I allude to it in chapter 11 of the novel, as a title it seems like a perfect metaphor. I then put the novel aside for about four years.

In 2016 I returned to the novel and began the next series of rewrites and fine tuning. Slowly with each rewrite the novel became more defined and better paced. That’s also when I started posting the chapters to my site.

This most recent three day rewrite is a big step in the progress of my novel and I hope that this journey is at long last reaching its end.

I’ll make a few more minor changes, but at 50,223 words, it really feels done.

Here’s the novel’s home page https://robertkirkendall.com/redwoodsummer/

You can also go straight to chapter 1 here: https://robertkirkendall.com/2016/02/27/redwood-summer-part-i-chapter-1/