Blundering Along

Don't be an intestine: they're full of crap!

Dreams: having them can really suck, sometimes. Like when you try to fulfill them, and they refuse to be fulfilled. Or when you think they’re about to be fulfilled, and then suddenly it seems like it’s going to be years. Or maybe they are fulfilled, but they’re not nearly as dreamy as you hoped they’d be. I’m on the second one, right now.

I’m a work-in-progress, folks: I’m a guy with a completed incomplete manuscript – the storyline is on paper start to finish, but it’s nowhere near ready for agents or publishers. I keep learning new things about writing, and stories, and suddenly what I have is rubbish – or at least some of it. And I’ve been working on this book for a long time.

A really long time.

Like, really really long.

And days like this I feel like I’m blundering along, trying to look like I know where I’m going – like I know where I’m taking you guys…and suddenly I realize I’ve come back around to the same spot we were at a year ago. Just like Haydren in the Northern Forest.

Part of that’s in the name, I guess: I’m itinerant. My mind goes lots of places. It’s ranged as far as the end of the series I’m working in and back, and out to little outlying stories and ideas, and across to other ones.

So I’m still working on Sarah’s arc, and taking second glances at Pladt’s and Geoffrey’s as well while I’m at it. I know that. And I know that once I’m done solidifying those arcs, I can revise with clarity. And I know that once I start Book Two, I’ll know to solidify these things before I write the whole novel, and avoid spending years and years reworking it.

And that’s the important part. The writers who don’t become authors are the ones who stop learning, and who stop trying. Well, I’m clearly still learning; I’ll try my best to not stop trying.

It may be 40 years wandering in the desert, but God willing we’ll see the Promised Land on the other side.