So I have a million things to do. I have a job assignment due on Friday, and several big projects in the pipeline.<\/p>\n
But I spent all day today trying to finish my book. And that is a very, very good thing.<\/p>\n
When I started this blog, it was supposed to be a tool to keep my novel writing on track. I was going to write two thousand words a day – a thousand blogging, and a thousand in the novel. At that pace, I’d have the thing done in just a few months.<\/p>\n
I started this blog last September. The book isn’t done. You do the math.<\/p>\n
Writing a book is much harder than writing a blog entry. It’s not just the classic writer’s block where you can’t think of anything to write. Actually, that’s not really what writer’s block is for me. Instead of thinking of nothing, I end up thinking of a bunch of stuff and running with it, only to discover I hate it when I get down the road a ways. Sometimes, it’s thinking of something entirely new to write that’s pretty good, so you have to go back and fix what you’ve already written to reflect the new direction. I began this book with a rough outline – I knew what I wanted as the beginning, middle, and end – but connecting the dots has taken me all over the map.<\/p>\n
I’ve probably written at least 50,000 words that are unusable given the novel’s current shape. That’s not wasted work, necessarily, as it helped to flesh out my thinking, but it gets frustrating when you write yourself into a dead end. I’ve now got just under 95,000 words that I’m OK with, although I’m sure there are lingering pieces of old ideas in there that I need to scrub out.<\/p>\n
I just want to be DONE.<\/p>\n
So I wrote all day. Even when I didn’t feel like writing. Even when I wanted to get up and go get a hamburger or something. I just kept writing, and I knew where I wanted it to go, and I got there. I’m now on the last chapter, which has been solidly in my brain since I began. The end is in sight. I can pass this whole stupid project like a kidney stone and move on to things that will make me money.<\/p>\n
Having an unfinished book hanging over your head like a sword of Damocles can be really, really taxing. I started the first version of this book in the early ’90s. I finished the crappy first version on Christmas Eve ten years ago. I don’t consider this a second draft; only about 5% of that first book has made its way into this one. But I’ve wanted to rewrite that early book for the past ten years, and it’s only now that the end is in sight.<\/p>\n
I just want it OUT. On paper. I don’t care how much it sucks. Actually, yes, I do, but if I can at least get a draft done, I can fix it. Getting it on paper for the first time is like passing a kidney stone. I just want to be RELEASED. I want to be able to urinate peacefully again, metaphorically speaking.<\/p>\n
Anyway, there it is. I should have skipped this blog entry if I really wanted to finish, but heaven help me, I just can’t do that, either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SoI have a million things to do. I have a job assignment due on Friday, and several big projects in the pipeline. But I spent all day today trying to finish my book. And that is a very, very good thing. When I started this blog, it was supposed to be a tool to keep ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4812,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions\/4812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}