“A mother is a son’s first true love. A son is a mother’s last true love.” ~Denzel Washington
Incubating longer than any other book I’ve ever written, I’ve finally reached the ending of my first draft after years of research and a terrific struggle to write my latest novel. Much of the delay was due to the lethargy of the pandemic, as well as procrastination about the paucity of time and abundance of new projects leering at me from my imagination. So, this novel’s crawl is all my fault. However, now that I’m at the story’s end, I’m learning some very intriguing things, and I sense that the extra time it’s taken has a lot to do with my discoveries. I could come up with a long list of things that had to be rewritten many times along the way, but my key discovery is that I didn’t know what the story was about or who the true protagonist was.
Now that’s odd, since the story came to me alone and wasn’t inspired by anyone else’s idea. Many more people have jumped on the bandwagon since I began this project, with biopics and new musicals all featuring the 18th Century polymath French Mulatto who played the violin like Paganini, wrote music like Haydn or Stamitz, wielded a sword and rode like a Musketeer and taught students like the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette. When I started my project, no one seemed to have heard of him, but Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint Georges has become almost a household name in the six or so years since I’ve been researching his exploits. Clearly, I missed my moment of unique discovery!