I have been working on a novel off and on (while working on other projects as well) and at one point I actually thought it was finished. It is one of those times when you sit down and it, thank god, it's done and then a few months later realize that it isn't.

I am an obsessive tweaker of my work, constantlyl going back and finding more that I could do. However, this turned out to be major changes and an additional 20k words. I always have a couple of friends, people whose judgement I trust, read over my material. While I was waiting for them to read, confident that I really had something good, I sent it along to my agent and then began the long wait while he fitted it into his reading schedule. You would be surprised how long it can take them even for people they have as clients.

Anyway, with two people reading the manuscript I reached a realization from what they were telling me that I had left some serious problems in and they were not the ones I had expected them to be.

It is common knowledge that the person who can be most blind about a manuscript is the author. Most of that is because we know what is supposed to be there and sometimes our eyes and mind tell us it is there. But you never know for certain until a fresh set of eyes actually reads it.

So I learned from my "critters" that one of the relationships was not convincing and that a couple of chapters were too episodic and important details had been left out. I also decided that I could, in response to discussions with them, take the level of my writing up a notch. I tend to write very lean, almost too lean at times. So now I have settled back to searching out all other instances of where I have committed the same errors. Time and patience. In the end the novel will have probably taken two years, including those times I have let it rest, to finish. But in the end I think it will be the best thing I have ever written.

Time and patience. I want it finished now, yesterday. I want at times to give up on it, but giving up is not in me. Some people seem to think that writing is simple, just words on a page, but a chapter that took twenty minutes to read often takes days and weeks to write and write it well. I have recently spend several days just on a single scene and feel as limp as a dish rag afterward. The important thing, is to keep at it. Keep working and don't give up.

For those who wish to talk about such things, you are welcome to stop by my chatroom at sff.net It is called thecorner.




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