Writing is slow, slow work

It’s amazing when you start a novel (or are outlining a novel… or are daydreaming about a novel…) you’re all gung-ho and ready to be a best selling author.

If you’re like me, you probably are trying to decide what you’ll wear on the Today Show. You’re thinking about who you’ll cast in the inevitable hit movie. You’re trying to decide how you’re going to sign books for your adoring fans.

A year and a half later you have the world’s roughest manuscript, a query letter floating in the ether, a rough start on a sequel and dwindling hope of ever finishing the first one. Editing is tedious and depressing. You don’t love your book any less, but it’s just so so so flawed. Every single day you go to bed hoping to wake up to it being magically done. Screw the process. Screw the journey. Let’s get with that destination, as long as the destination is stardom.

I take classes to keep me disciplined, but I skip a lot of days between semesters and even sometimes during because laying on the couch and letting my brain rot with Law and Order: SVU reruns is more appealing than dumping my brain out onto paper. And it’s certainly more appealing than pouring my unstable sand dune of a manuscript into brick frames to work on my eventual house.

Between the fact that working my way through 65,000 words just takes a long time and the fact that I’m a slacker, this is a slow process. I just have to keep at it.

I don’t really have any advice besides the obvious advice I’m giving myself, so this isn’t a helpful blog. I’m just putting it out into the void that if you are struggling with impatience and procrastination (an odd pairing, but one for the writer nonetheless!)