swimming in the rewrite

I just hit page 200 in my rewrite. How long did it take me in the first draft? A year? I reread and relive, sometimes I can even smell the scent of what I had for lunch that day or the kiss of ocean breeze on my face as I walked from the Santa Monica Library to the car to go get Damian the day I wrote that particular paragraph.

Reading a novel can be a full body immersion, submerging deep into the prose and world of the book. It's so different reading a novel when you've written it. You're inside as a reader but also outside as a writer. You go to bed thinking about it, wake up wondering if you should go back and fix that bit where he thinks about the future, add more to the s&x bit, what about the phrasing of that other part, was it too cliche? And yet you find yourself immersed nevertheless, waterlogged, swimming in that world, but a world you yourself have created.

It's an interesting feeling.

(And before you say, "Wait, you're moving too fast!" you should know: I rewrote much of this first half once already, skipping only a few larger issues I'm tackling now, along with word choice and cadence. I'm working micro and macro at once here.)