The Wrong Side of Real

I totally woke up on the wrong side of the bed today - or futon, rather. My Nathan Fillion dream slipped away from me, and for the first few hours I was awake I was in that in-between state where I flipped back and forth from feeling whiny one minute to wanting somebody at whom I could yell the next.

I'm still feeling a bit groggy, but at least the other urges have passed. The SDA (Starbucks Drink Approximation) has helped a little. Still, it's one of those days where I'm not feeling the book. Despite the surprising amount of progress I've made in the last couple of weeks, I'm only at 73 pages and 22,806 words. That's about 25% of what the book's total length should be. I'm pretty confident I'll still reach my goal of finishing the very, very rough draft by my birthday, despite the fact that my sad little book will likely only be 100 pages - one third of what the final draft should be. The amount of work I have left to do before my first novel is ready to be sent out into the world is staggering.

The second and third/final drafts, I am guessing, will be substantially harder to write than the first. The first is easy. Get the plot down and make as much of it as you can decent writing. In the second, I'll have to more than double the word count. I'll be adding another eight or so full chapters to fill in the ones that, for expediency's sake, I skipped in the first round. I'll also have to bulk up my current chapters by between 7-10 pages per chapter. All of this will have to be done in a manner in which the new chapters meld with the old. I'll have to edit as I go and I suck at editing.

I really wish I'd been keeping a time sheet for my writing. Despite the fact that I woke up with the idea for the book in my head approximately three years ago, I'm guessing I've spent two months writing it full-time if I add up the hours. Let's say it will take approximately three months then for a first draft. Allowing for the difficulty level of the second draft (after which I'll be passing it around for constructive criticism), I'm not sure what goal to set for finishing that part. The end of this year seems too soon - it's only eight months after the first draft should be finished. Before I turn thirty-six on 4/15/2012? By the end of 2012? I work so much better with a deadline. Of course, all of this is dependent upon if/when I ever find gainful employment.

By the end of 2012 is the latest I'd like to get it done, so for now I think I'll set the goals as finishing the second draft by 4/14/2012 and the final book by 12/31/2012. If necessary because of work or other unforseen circumstances, I'll push the deadlines back as far as finishing the final book by 4/14/2013 so that at the very least, it will be finished while I'm still 36. God, this is nauseating. It's rather real now. I'm 90% sure that the SSP (super-secret project) will be done before the novel but only 3% sure that something will come of it. There's this - the blog that I intend to keep if/when I ever miraculously get published. More than both of those combined is the enormity of finishing a novel and sending it out into the world. I've wanted to be a writer for as long as I remember. I wrote my first novel when I was thirteen. If we go from there, that's twenty-three years of working towards a goal. Twenty-three friggin' years. That's a long-ass time. To fail after that - after twenty-three years of waiting for my dream to come true...Do you recover from that? Stephen King's first book was rejected. I'd like to think I would go on. That I wouldn't give up. But for now, eighty-six days from turning 35 and eighty-seven from being closer to forty than to thirty, all I can think of is how terrifying fighting for your dream is.

Wish me luck, ok?

Listening to:

Gramercy Arms, "Looking at the Sun"

Crooked Fingers, "Louisa's Bones"