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• Mood: pensive

The Road Taken

It's been nearly nine months in writing — or not writing, mostly — and I almost don't want to finish it. I'm getting the same skin-crawly feeling that I do when thinking about touching smooth cold stone. I don't want it to be over.

Looking over it, 12k words or so, and maybe another 1k to come, and I have mixed feelings. It's better than I feared that it would be, but it isn't as good as I wanted it to be. I suppose nothing ever can be as good as an author would want it to be, but I still can't help wishing.

I know 12k doesn't sound much, particularly given how long it's taken, but as I was saying to petulans this afternoon, that's the residue of I'd suppose something like 50k of various attempts and edits and wholesale murders of words. I don't normally write like that: I do a first draft, polish it a little, and then I'm done. I suppose I'm lucky. This, on the other hand, has taken so much sheer wrestling with, I'm not sure that I'd have had the guts to start it if I'd known what I was letting myself in for.

I don't know. Can I actually write? Or have I just got away with it so far because nobody's had the guts to tell me that my writing sucks?

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