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I’m not sure the dragon won today, but I certainly feel like I’ve gotten chewed around the edges. I have a page for the whole day. It seems like every time I gain any speed on this ending I get interrupted with some bit of publicity for a different book, or with some mundane topic that can’t wait. I’ve been nearly done with this book for so long. I’ve never been this close to the end and not been able to cross the finish line for this many days. What is wrong? Well, I’m not sure I’ve ever had this many different projects in so many different stages of completion before. Each stage demands attention like trying to give birth to a newborn while you’re teaching a toddler how to walk, an elementary age their A, B, Cs, a teenager how to drive, and a college student how to be independent. All the above while still in hard labor with a baby that just doesn’t seem to want to see the outside world. I am just not very good at multi-tasking. Yet, my career has reached a point where it is a skill that I must acquire, and become proficient at, and like now, not later. Frankly, I don’t know how to do it. Nobody is good at everything. I am one of those people that is best when I can concentrate completely on one task at a time until it’s complete. It has been years since I had the luxury of actually seeing one project through before the next one needed attention. I keep thinking I’ll get better at it, but instead I seem to be getting worse.
The dragon didn’t win today, I didn’t get to fight him long enough for him to win, or me to loose. I think the dragon is on the hill bored, because I start up the hill, but keep getting a message from the castle before I can get up to the cave on top. If there is a prince to save up there, he’s toast, because I’m never going to get there. Or that’s how it feels today. Maybe tomorrow will be a better and more productive day. Hope so, because I am getting majorly discouraged. The slow pace has made me begin to doubt the climax of the book and start changing things. Changing stuff before the first draft is complete is death. You will be consumed by your own doubts, and second guessing. Full speed ahead, or I loose my way. One of the reasons I write so quickly is that slow does not work for me as a writer. Slow gives me too much time to change my mind. I end up rewriting things that don’t need it, taking out scenes I do need, or putting in things I don’t. This is the freaking end of the book, I know what needs to be done. I know what happens, damnit. So why I can’t I get there, because about the time the book is rolling there’s a phone call, or some God awful important thing that needs my attention. The real problem is that it does need my attention. I’ve fought for control of as much of my career as possible, well, the price for that, is you have to control it. So bitch and whine though I may, I wouldn’t be happy if I was out of the loop. I certainly wouldn’t be happy if I didn’t have the control. No, that would make me severely unhappy. But . . . I am puzzled by how to balance it all. I feel like one of those Circus acts where you balance the plates on the long poles and run from plate to plate keeping them spinning. Right now, it feels like the line of poles is so very long that there is no way to keep them all spinning, no way to not have some of the plates come crashing down. I can only run so fast. Today, it was not fast enough. Today, I have a page, and almost no progress on a book that is due in less than three weeks. I worked very hard to have the deadline for this book moved up. To give you guys the book in June instead of October of ’07. But I thought I was days away from the finish. Now I’m stalled, and I can’t seem to get up the hill. I’ve gone from having months to finish this book, to weeks, and I am paying the price for the change. I am tired, and I have lost faith. Lost faith in the book, in myself, in the plot. Every writer does this, but usually my low point is somewhere close to the beginning. The beginning didn’t give me any trouble because I had written the first chapter months ago. I should have remembered that the book has this moment, all books have it, that moment when you don’t believe you can pull it off. After twenty plus books and there still, always, that moment. A moment when you think you have failed before you’ve even really tried. I should have understood that if I didn’t have this moment early, I would have it late. Strangely, I feel better having written that. I had forgotten what was happening. I had forgotten that this is the moment of despair that every book has for the writer. This book fooled me. I was so close to the finish line, so close, that I thought, well, finally I’ve gotten to that point as a writer where despair does not come to you, and wail like a banshee on your shoulder. I was too confident, and that’s how it suckered me. I thought I was safe, but every book has it’s moment of despair. I can think, oh, that’s what this is, I’ve done this before. I’ve done this twenty-two times before. I’ve been in this dark place many times. It is an illusion. There’s nothing wrong with the book. It hasn’t failed. What has failed is the writer’s nerve. That part of us that gives us the courage to sit in a room alone and make stuff up out of whole cloth, and be brave enough to share it with other people. Brave enough to put a little piece of yourself out there for others to enjoy, or hate. It takes courage to fight the dragon, and sometimes the dragon has a wizard helping him. The wizard sends ghosts and banshees to cry in our ears, that no one will want to read this, that this story does not work, does not hold together. The despair says, this time the magic did not work. This time if you climb the hill to the dragon’s cave you will be destroyed, because the book in your hands is not real, and will not shield you this time. But it is not true. There is nothing wrong with your book, or you. The despair is a trick to see if you can push past it, and conquer what you fear. This will be my twenty-third trip up the hill. I know I can do it, because I’ve done it before. Tomorrow I will get up. My husband and I will get our kid off to school. We will walk the dogs. Then I will come up here to my office. I will put on my armor, I will say a prayer, and I will run up that damn hill.