I finished a first draft of a new novel manuscript on Wednesday. As soon as I was done, I shrugged my shoulders and said, "Oh shit, this is shit. What a pile of steaming shit. I can't believe I spent so much time on this awful, smelly, wretched pile of steaming shit." Then I got a bad taste in my mouth, went downstairs, and stared out the window for, like, hours.
(Don't worry. Seems I do that for every book. I pretty much did the same thing for Yellow Medicine, too, and look how that turned out: January Magazine Best of 2008 list and nominee for Crimespree Award.)
After finishing one of these, which is usually a project that takes up nearly a year of my time (and sometimes over), I push it off to the side and try not to think about it. But what do I end up doing? Thinking about it constantly. Thinking about mistakes I'm sure I made. Thinking about how thin some of the scenes are and how I can beef them up with details. About characters who need more personality. About all the blunders because I actually tried to write a real mysterythis time, and I'm too stupid to plot one of those. Most urgently, of course, I think about how no one will give a fuck about this book. Oh, don't even pull out the old "I'm sure it's fine. I like your stuff." I'm not fishing for compliments so much as I am just telling you what my brain does to me every goddamned time.
So yesterday...I read a bunch of stuff online, then went out to mow the yard. I made lunch for my wife. I read another huge chunk of James Lee Burke's Rain Gods. I watched episodes of Judge Judy and Wild Russia on the DVR. I thought about the pile of crap file I'd just spent months writing. More staring out the window. I picked some of our tomatoes out in the garden. I went to the library but didn't find what I was looking for.
But in the back of my mind, I said, "Tomorrow I will get right back on the bicycle and forge ahead on the newnew manuscript." See, I always have several things going at once. There's one noir novel that I tried to trick myself into writing "a page a day. Just one itty bitty page!" It's currently 11 pages long, haven't touched it in weeks. Then there's another one I'm really hot to get going on, and I've got a couple of chapters already in the bag. (And let's forget about the one dealing with characters from the Billy Lafitte world, which is now not even on the back burner, but actually in the deep freeze wrapped in unmarked tin foil under the fake Bigfoot corpse.)
So rah rah! Let's get back to the W(h)IP! (or the "Work (ha!) in Progress"). I mean, I've been dying to get to it for months, licking my lips and counting the days until I wrote END on the previous steaming, rancid, mushy, humid, embarrassing pile of feces...and here comes Friday morning!
I didn't do it. I hadn't "recovered" enough to sit my ass down and focus. Also, the routine of writing the book hasn't quite sunk in yet. On days previous when I decided to lay down tracks for it, the thing spilled out of me, seven pages a day (and trust me, they're not bad pages). I can't keep up that pace, of course, but it means that the story is rich and full in my mind, and I'm seeing it like a movie in my head. Good sign.
But not today. Just wasn't in me. Probably not tomorrow either, as we'll be out roaming, enjoying the weekend. And I've only got a week left of summer vacation before meetings on campus start. Once the semester is underway I will be plenty busy with classes, administrative work, visiting writers, committee meetings, etc. *Whew* All that difficult manual labor out in the hot sun! I know!
That's okay. I'll find the time to carve out novel writing in the midst of it all. I always have.
Just not today, tomorrow, or...hell, probably not Sunday either.
Instead, I'll keep slogging through Rain Gods (I like Burke, but get to the action already! Enough with the pages and pages of a character wondering if he/she is worthy of living due to past bad choices. We get it!), watch Penn & Teller's Bullshit, follow the #CreoZerg threadon Twitter, listen to badass tunes on Blip.fm, find out if my wife's old Ford Explorer is worth keeping or clunking, play with the cats, and watch it rain. Tonight, we're off to a neighbor's house for some socializing.
Come Monday, I'll be itching to write, and also to start revising the pile of crap.
I'm sure of it.
Any "Hey, I finished that! Let's celebrate!" rituals? Or, like me, do you secretly loathe what you just accomplished?
Friday Bonus Music Video (Blitzen Trapper "Black River Killer"):
Well, I haven't written a novel yet (hey! I'm workin' on it!) but every time I finish a short story I'm actually pretty enthused, as in, "Holy shit, I'm a fucking genius!"
Reality sets in later, of course, when I have to go back and re-read what I've written, but I'm always pretty psyched when I write "The End".
Posted by: Graham | August 08, 2009 at 10:05 AM
Congrats on being done. TACOS ALL AROUND!!!
Posted by: Jeff Shelby | August 08, 2009 at 01:39 PM
Congrats on finishing up the new one so quickly! I hope it is soon in the hands of a worthy publisher! And with Rain Gods, literally one of his worst. I had to put it down and out it into the soon to be traded at the used bookstore pile
Posted by: Keith Rawson | August 09, 2009 at 11:01 AM
I bet that pile of crap you're wallowing over will smell like lavender to most of us, so finish and share already.
Posted by: ruth jordan | August 10, 2009 at 02:33 AM
Congratulations on finishing the book, Neil!
Posted by: Karen Olson | August 10, 2009 at 08:55 AM