Back to the book

I was working on a special project, and I wasn't able to find enough time in my schedule to make serious headway on it. The project involved writing, so it was competing for that part of my day. The deadline approached, then became part of my past as I utterly blew it, and then the real deadline, the one with no wiggle room, appeared. I had to do the job. In desperation I put aside Overthrowing Heaven and focused my writing time for five days on the project. I finished the project, sent it in, and last night returned to the book.

I was so relieved I could hardly stand it.

I spent about 23 years farting around with writing: doing a story every couple of years, agonizing all the time, not able to give up the writing but also not able to buckle down. Finally, I decided my only hope was to work on my writing every day. Every day. No exceptions. I've done that for the last three years--including those five days of working on the special project. I've spent my writing time some days on page proofs, some on plotting, most on novel writing, and some on essays and short stories, but it's all been writing work.

The special project was writing work, so I didn't expect the days on it to bother me so much.

I was wrong. I found the time away from the book to be nervewracking, because at some level leaving the novel, even for only a few days, left open the possibility that I might slip in discipline and never finish it.

Neurotic? Most definitely. But it works.

Last night, as I said, I resumed Overthrowing Heaven, and I'm heading back to it now. I'm quite happy about that fact, and though I know The Dread awaits me sometime in the next ten or twenty or thirty thousand words, it's not here now.

It's good to be back.