All caught up

I've finally rewritten the first part of draft two and stitched my opening chapters together. Some months ago, I realized that I needed to delay introducing a major character. It's taken me a while to write him out, add drama, fix some pronouns . . .

But now, I've got the start, and I can just plow ahead.

That's the method I typically use when writing: start from the beginning and move to the end. But every once in a while, when I don't feel like writing, I'll pick up at a scene that seems less of a chore and start there, trusting I'll be able to work it in at the right time.

The point is this: I'm making progress.

It sounds so silly to work on a novel. Really, what are the chances that I'll ever publish it?

But as I'm sitting down, organizing my life and trying to plan ahead to make the best use of my remaining grains of sand, I keep running into this discomforting fact: Working on my fiction is my number one goal in life.

I've tried to convince myself that building my career and accumulating wealth is my top priority. But 50 years from now, if I had $10 million in assets and this unfinished novel staring at me, I would have felt like I'd wasted my life.

That's the reason I need to keep at this. Not because I've posted some silly blog or because I'm shaming myself into developing discipline with regard to my writing.

At the end of the day, my writing matters to me.

I suspect that focusing on how we can achieve our true heart's desire would give us greater energy for all the other things we have to get done.

No, we can't always get what we want, but we can usually find a way to meet those deep-seated needs on some level.

At least, that's what I think.

What do you think?

How time flies

Yesterday I was feeling fairly productive, kicking about in my boyfriend's parents' home in New Jersey. We had a lull in dinner preparations, and I decided to break out the creativity book my best friend had given me for my birthday.

One thing led to another, and I started thinking about that frenzied rush to churn out my 50,000-word novel draft. National Novel Writing Month 2002. One complete story arc, created between midnight, November 1, and midnight, November 30.

Then, it hit me.

I wrote the damn thing three years ago.

And I'm officially on chapter two of the rewrite.

Where does the time go?

First, I couldn't work on the rewrite because my corporate job kept me in the office from nine until nine, Monday through Friday.

Then, I quit my job, and I still couldn't work on it because I was freaking out over how the heck I was going to pay my bills. (So much for immersing myself in the novel until paying work came along.)

Next, I picked up some clients, but I still couldn't work on it because I was too busy trying to manage those paying gigs.

Long story not so short, here I am three years later with a shitty first draft, a bang-up synopsis (I have done some work here and there . . . ) and one-and-a-half chapters of my second draft.

No more.

I'm not getting younger. (In case I try to forget that biological fact, I've got a crop of four silver hairs just waiting to multiply.) And I've got an amazingly supportive beau who keeps encouraging me to keep at it.

For additional impetus, I keep picking up these chick lit books for relaxation and research, and I can barely bring myself to finish them. They're pretty dull. Yet each represents the realized dream of a woman who took the time to churn through the writing and rewriting process and then stuck out the twisted path to publication.

Who cares if I'm more skilled as a writer? (If I am. I'm willing to admit the personal bias that writers cultivate to survive.)

The fact remains that I'm not doing enough of the writing that counts.

I could gross six figures this year as a freelancer, but if I'm still on the first hundred pages of draft two, I'll consider 2006 a literary failure.

Is this the healthiest approach to take, shaming myself into working on my novel? Probably not. I've had an amazing writing instructor through Gotham who offers steadfast, quiet encouragement and actually chides us students when we're too hard on ourselves.

But I did get up early this morning and put in a solid hour on that second draft.

I completed chapter one and restarted chapter two.

As a bonus, I got a reprieve from my standing 7 a.m. meeting tomorrow. Will I use that time to snooze, or will I put in another hour?

I'm not quite ready to place bets either way.