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november 9th.
That night, Marguerite writes in her diary, this hope of renewed health was nothing but a dream.
Reality is nothing but what we make of it.
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Listen to your body, listen to your mind.
I could've soldiered through today and started my fourth chapter, then I might have been finished by Sunday at the latest, but one is that I'm attending a write-in tomorrow where I kinda felt I needed something to work on that was part of the initial writing process and two, I could feel in my system that I needed to take a breather today and give myself an opportunity to land in my text properly - and in myself.
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Which means I've written, besides entries in here, no more than 200 words today and I haven't even counted them, because it was mostly editing stuff, very few additions.
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It has been just what I needed, tbh. I needed a day to focus on other aspects of writing than being actually creative and productive. Do things at another pace than constantly fighting the counter. I've read my first three chapters start to finish, only light editing, mostly to make notes for chapter four, the final chapter. Just to tie up lose ends and such. I have about a page of notes now and I hope to incorporate most of it some way or another. I have also rewatched the end of the Hamburg Ballet's version of The Lady of the Camellias and although I love the Paris Opera one, I actually think Hamburg Ballet's film touches me more, from a Manon-centric perspective. It's just superb.
Another thing that I realised upon rereading the first three chapters is that I will need to change title on this story. Purple Diamonds is an aspect of it, but doesn't cover everything I want to say with it, so I'm mulling over what to call it instead. Right now I'm partial to "Humility" which is the way Armand signs off to Marguerite in her copy of "Manon Lescaut" and a theme that is a red thread throughout all three chapters so far and will definitely be in chapter four also. Otherwise I'm thinking of simply going for "Manon to Marguerite" which would be the ultimate shipper-title, but also be a reference to what Armand wrote in Marguerite's copy of Manon's story. We'll see what I end up picking. Once the fourth chapter is done, it should be easier to imagine what's best.