Head-space and Editing

Head-space is a funny old term...but an important one when editing ,well, for me any way. What I mean by this is the ability to think of the story or large chunks of the story as a whole. In theory this should be easy but I find that in practice it can be very hard, especially for the writer. I don't know about others but when writing I am intent on the that scene, that moment in time and frequently can forget the everything else like how it fits into the story and all it's ramifications. My heads starts getting fuzzy just thinking about it...But boy is it important. Think of it as a camera on close focus and then pulling back to wide angle...I'm struggling to pull things into focus in wide angle....



At the moment I using draft 26 of August Rock as the starting point and draft 3 as a reference point for the of writing draft 27. In draft 26 I knew my voice (discovered it writing The Cornish House and the books that followed) and I knew I'd lost it in August Rock somewhere between say draft 5 and 25. So my goal for draft 26 was to put my voice back into the story which meant to darken it...not in a bad way but make it deal with more than just boy meets girl. I think on the whole I achieved it. I can't remember what the goal of draft 3 was other than to improve, but draft 3 contains the hero's pov view and lots of deleted scenes that I find I'm needing for their details - those terribly important things that ground a scene.



So for draft 27 I'm changing from 3rd person to 1st...this does not just mean changing from she to I - oh, how I wish it did. It means re-envisioning each scene and rewriting it. In my head it's not what does Judith see but what do 'I' see and feel. What am 'I' thinking?



At the same time, I have given a character a Lazarus moment... all the previous drafts the story had begun after he was in the ground or about to be put in it. Now he's alive and kicking for the first 5th of the book which mean I'm moving scenes willy nilly and trying to hold onto so many different considerations that I'm finding I struggle with head space to put the whole picture together.



I think if I could use index cards this would help but past attempts have proved futile. I just feel so spacey and long for the clarity of the first draft when I can just write through the story and not try and weave the old with the new....I wish there was a magic wand to clear away the fog but there isn't. I must use instinct to clear and hope I can fix the gaps later when I feel the story is finally coming together.



Do any of you struggle with head-space?