I'm writing a novel? Really?

Just a quick blog to celebrate the fact that I have written 100 pages in my book; it’s a milestone I sometimes doubted I would reach, and it’s surreal to think that for more than a year I’ve lived with this world inside my head.

Over the course of these 100 pages, I admit that there were times when I wanted to give up. Weeks occasionally went by without me writing a word. Could I have finished everything by now? Possibly, but I doubt it would have been the same book that it will be in the end. I stuck it out, though, stalls and all. Now, at 100 pages, even though the book is not even halfway to its climax, it has started to look like a novel to me.

I would always tell people I was working on a novel, but even I had my doubts about what I was doing. Could this really be a novel? Was the story horrible? Were the characters one dimensional? Could I keep and hold my interest for the length of time it took to write a novel? (I’m constantly distracted by shiny things. Even now, I wonder what my wife is doing in the other room and if perhaps I shouldn’t get up to see what she’s up to.) But now the book, funny enough, looks like a book. The plot is coming together; the characters, with each word, are becoming fully-formed. And I’m more excited than ever to see where this takes me.

A few weeks ago, I read an essay by an author who said it took him four years to write his first novel. Four years of starting and stopping, of writing and rewriting. And suddenly, I felt better about my own work. I was going to use a sports analogy here; you know, the one about the race and how it’s not how fast you run, but that you finish at all, but that seems a bit corny, now that I think about it. Plus, I don’t run, so I know I would finish last and would quite possibly be disqualified for trying to take an old lady’s scooter; I say try because the old lady would hit me with her purse and there was some hard candy in there; that hurt. Not that that has ever happened to me before. Ahem. *** Where was I?

Oh yes, I think that for all the hair pulling, teeth grinding, synonym finding and metaphor headaches, this novel has become an incredible learning experience, letting me mature as a writer. And even if I still tend to ramble, well, heck, that’s what the editing process is for. So here is to 100 pages of adventure, with 100, and more, to come.

***This site does not condone grand theft scooter, struggling with old ladies or candy tougher than I am.***