What Makes Me Laugh

         I’ve been working on finishing a book for about eight years now. If that seems like a long time, well, just think how my spouse feels when for eight years in a row, on New Year’s Eve, I say, “This year I’m going to finish my book.” And the funny thing is that it’s not just one book. It’s not one agonizing editing project. No, it’s about eight books with eight different plots. None of which have ever kept my interest long enough for them to be finished.

What happens is that I’ll get excited about an idea, work very hard on the idea, and then my life and work conspire to distract me for some time from the project, so that when I go back to it it seems old and stale and well, bad. Thus, a new idea begins, and the pattern repeats.

For inspiration, I’ve read every book “On Writing” that has ever been published searching for the magic formula. I’ve read Stephen King’s advice, William Zinsser, Annie Dillard, Anne Lamott, and many lesser known authors who decide to break up their own writing block with a book about writing. Some of these authors are more famous for their books about writing then they are for any other type of writing (e.g. Julia Cameron). Don’t get me wrong. I’ve enjoyed all of them, but they weren’t what I needed. 

At times, I’ve spent weeks sleep-deprived because of the odd notion that writing an hour before you normally would get up inspires genius and somehow taps into the right-side of the brain. I’ve filled journals full of “3-pages” blather (Julia Cameron’s advice) that I can’t seem to toss. I have notecards upon notecards with ideas from “Writing Down the Bones”. I’ve joined a monthly writer’s group to impose deadlines for production. I’ve outlined. I’ve not outlined. I feel envy when I’m in bookstores, and I listen to author interviews almost religiously. Imagine what I might have accomplished if I had put this kind of effort into writing?

I blame all of this lack of finishing on that great old beast — perfectionism. It’s a scary thought, finishing something that you care so deeply about, and risking its failure. It’s a scary thought that if I actually finish the book it may never see the shelf of a bookstore. You see, if you don’t finish something, well, you might not have to face up to the fact that it’s not perfect. It’s just always a work in progress.

Sigh. So this year I have committed to finishing, once again, only this time I’ve said that it’s ok if it’s not perfect. It just has to get done. Inspired by a friend who finished a rough draft of a book in a month by writing 1,500 words a day, I finished a very, very rough draft of a young adult fantasy novel earlier this year. The revision process killed me though. It was too rough.

So, I’m onto another project, only this time I’m doing something I’ve never tried before. First, I’m writing it with someone else, so I have someone to bounce ideas, edit, etc. on a regular basis. Second, I’m writing what I know. I used to try and write great literary research monsters, and now I don’t care about that. I just want to get my story down on the page, make people laugh, and tell the truth. I hope that’s enough to keep me going, one word at a time, one sentence at a time, until it’s done. I’ll keep you posted, and in a shameless plea for help, encouraging words are welcome.