Progress Report from Egypt

I’m currently reading chapter nine. I imagine I’ll probably finish reading through the novel by Sunday, and that’s when the real revising work will begin.

Chapter nine describes the presentation that Leah and her group give to their history class — a terrifying experience for most students, but it’s especially terrifying for someone like Leah, who is always afraid and uncomfortable speaking to people, no matter whether she is speaking to a room full of people or only one person.

In the 1996 draft of Leah, the reader never gets to actually hear Leah present her report. That is to say, I describe the experience, but the text of Leah’s report is not in the novel. I think I might change that this time. It might be a fun challenge to write a short report on the pharaohs of ancient Egypt (that was Leah’s responsibility in the group presentation), place that report in quotation marks, and include it in the revised novel. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea. In fact, it might be one of the first things I do next week.