With great humility, he climbs to the top of the hill, into the valley, and higher still to the crest of the great peak. He tears his shirt from his back, musculature throbbing, nee pulsing and twitching excitedly. He rears his head back far and, choking just a bit, he wails: “I HAVE DONE IT!”
Yeah, that’s right, after four years of failure I’ve finally beat the damned beast on my shoulder and cranked out 50,000 (more actually) words. And the craziest thing? Not that hard.
Getting started, hard. Words 10,000-18,000, a bitch. Then the story discovered itself and cranked on through to the end. Took a decidedly strange twist about half-way through when I realized that the characters were not so much being written as they were living right through me. It’s a bizarre experience, actually, and one I’m anxious to repeat.
I just returned from our Thank God It’s Over party at our illustrious local coordinator’s place here in Portland. Apparently, we as the Portland crew came in 11th worldwide, an auspicious accomplishment considering our group beat the New York group.
What’s next? More writing. One of my fellow participants told me her New Year’s Resolution last year was to collect at least 12 rejection letters. I thought that was fantastic, rewarding activity instead of just success in a sort of “glass is almost getting to half-empty” way. She failed, actually, collecting only nine rejections and two successes. Damned successes — snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, that.
I’m shelving the book for a few months. I’l probably start editing in February and see where it goes from there. At a minimum, I’ll drop the $500 bucks to self-publish through iUniverse so all my friends can buy it for themselves on bn.com.
Because that is the coolest thing in the world ever, ever, ever.