I’m roughly 10,000 words from the end of my latest book (unless it goes longer than I planned), which is typically the point at which my energy spikes and my production soars and I barrel toward the smash-bang ending in a frenzy of creativity, completing ten days’ work in two laser-focused nights.
Yeah, so you noticed the word “typically,” right?
The problem with going on that creativity-fueled last run to Kessel in 11 parsecs is that you need the creativity to fuel it, and while the ideas have been coming fast and furious as I approach the finish line, supplying all sorts of little details to be incorporated into the final product (and with any luck, so seamlessly that you’ll never know I threw them in at the last minute), the Great Idea, the climactic crescendo designed to take the reader up on the crest of a wave and deposit him (or her) gasping on the beach of my epilogue, still escapes me. In other words, I know the ending, but I don’t quite know how to get there.
This is, as one will anticipate, a bit frustrating. Not only do I want to deliver a suitably exciting ending to my book (which has already taken significantly longer than I’d hoped), but I have other projects I want to get onto. Two, in fact, which is a lot for me. And they’re not even the same projects I thought I was going to tackle next. One is a short story that’s already drafted but far from finished, and the other is the most ambitious task I’ve ever set myself. It’s a novel, but this time, I have to outline it first. And I can’t even do that until I’m finished researching it. Fortunately, I have literally spent years amassing a small library of the kinds of research materials I will need. I’ve never really done a lot of pre-research before. It should be fun and educational.
But I can’t do any of that until I finish this book. It shouldn’t be so hard; all I need is a slam-bang action set piece that the guys at Marvel Studios do three times a week. Of course, they do have a multi-million dollar budget and a crew of experienced screenwriters. I have my own brain and a crew of experienced baristas at the local Starbucks (who are all probably budding screenwriters themselves).
I can do this. I’ve done it before. And as I keep telling myself, it will be great.
Someday. “In the not-too-distant future…”
#SFWApro
Graffiti on the Walls of Time 