I’ve written and rewritten the first 105 pages of my novel, shown it to writer friends, and gotten some good advice. It still needs more work, but for now I’m leaving it as is and forging on to the end. 

Writing fiction in first draft feels like hacking your way through a jungle to make a path that may or may not lead anywhere.  Or digging huge rocks out of the ground to make a garden. I tried to write a synopsis this time so I’d be calmer about the whole thing and not feel like I was leaping off a cliff each morning as I started to write (to mix a few metaphors here), but it was boring. Boring to write the synopsis and boring to read. Part of me writes fiction to find out what the story is, how it’ll end.  Why write if you know all the answers?

There’s no lesson here, or even advice. Just the knowledge that if you’re in the middle of a novel and feeling crazy, you’ve got company.  We start off in a blaze of inspiration and hope – God, what fun to write! – And pretty soon we’re ready to sell our children to get the damn book finished.