Many moons ago, I lived in a 2nd floor walk-up on Newbury Street dubbed the shoebox, and he rented a room in the former servants’ quarters on the fourth floor (even more stairs, I had to take them two at a time at a momentum run to survive the ascent) of an old Commonwealth Avenue townhouse that had been broken into condos. We regularly spent entire days walking around Copley Square, sitting on benches on Comm Ave, in the BPL Courtyard, a few regular cafes, Newbury Pizza or each other’s humble abodes, discussing Literature, Art, listening to Mozart, Schubert, old time Rockabilly, Frank Sinatra’s In the Wee Small Hours, and critiquing poetry and plays each wrote. We really dissected each other’s work, at times taking personal affronts, at others, able to make useful and take useful suggestions. Sometimes another friend joined us, but mostly it was just the two of us, picking apart each other’s work in order to build it back up again into something better. That was fifteen and then some years ago.

When he handed back my baby, er, first draft in Cambridge, he very kindly told me it was a great story and excellent characterizations. He gave a few verbal points of interest. But mostly, I noticed just how much ink he laid on each page in my quick thumb through in the dark of the rainy night under a street light.

How very film noir.

I still can’t look at it.

It reminded me of last spring to summer when I discovered Kerri Smith’s Wreck this Journal. I was so stuck, I hadn’t worked on the manuscript since about three to four years prior, even though it had never left my mind. I had let life get in the way of art, and I needed to find a way back. I discovered the way back to art through Wreck. It has everything to do with being able to be free about it, make it messy, have fun with it and play. Because of that little tome and my use of it, I was able to return to the manuscript with a renewed sense of fun and inspiration about it. It didn’t matter if I made it work, what mattered was that I was writing about kids and what they go through in sixth grade, and that even if some of it is hard, it’s also fun to be a kid, have a family who loves you, even when they’re a pain, have friends who stick by you, even if you’re not exactly sure why, and that no matter who you are, you can do something great, maybe even change the world a little.

So, now that I really am right at the end of the ‘first’ draft (which has already been through practically word-by-word edits), like two to three scenes from the end, I find myself trying to make it work, or avoiding doing so, or whatever so that I won’t finish. I took a moment to breath, to get messy, to create something completely different and let it go out into the universe, especially not perfect. Here is the result:

I wanted to feel like a kid, so I played with markers, I wanted the sense of youth and fun and something new and had been thinking a lot about spring because it’s spring. On my dog walks and in my gardening, I’ve been noticing lots of itty bitty wildflowers, like confetti all over my lawn and around the public areas in my subdivision. I thought about them being fairy footprints left behind after a night of dancing. I wrote a haiku. Then I free wrote in the journal about spring, how it’s about change and new and color…

So it looks like a kid did it, and I’m glad. I needed to feel more like a kid to finish writing about one. And I put a lot more productive hours into my manuscript the week i did this page. Letting go and playing in creativity really can set you free.

Who wants to be next?

Since that post, I haven’t been able to write. I’ve been happy with my re-writes up to this point, but I wonder now if I’m as far ahead as I thought I was. Is my sparse writing style enough? Can I do better? The other big questions that spring to mind are when will I really be finished? And will I know I’m finished when I get there?

It’s ironic that my book is about home improvement when time and again I have likened the re-writing, re-editing, re-assessing process to the continual construction of the Winchester Mystery House. I think we can safely say that the “additions” to that house didn’t improve it in any way. I wonder about this as I tear apart my novel and try to reconstruct it into something better, something more functional. Am I simply making additions or am I actually making improvements?

I can see this going on indefinetely. The more I learn of the cut-throat behind-the-scenes business of the publishing industry, the more my fear grows that I’m never going to be finished. I was always the student who wanted to turn in my best work, but deadlines always loomed at school. Now there are no deadlines. I can tweak endlessly. And because I lack the experience to know when enough is enough, I might very well end up doing that.

So my question is to those of you who’ve declared your project finished and have gone on to see it published: How do you know when you’ve reached the finish line?

Then I read this post by well-known crime fiction critic David J. Montgomery, and I realized I was that desperate writer he was talking about. I realized my novel wasn’t particularly original–well-written, yes, but not about anything or presented in any way new–and that, as he writes, I could actually harm my career (not to mention the small press’s reputation) by trying to get it published.

So I decided to shelve it and start over.

Remarkably, this doesn’t bother me that much. I think I’d grown tired of the novel, and I came to understand that I don’t want to spend a lot of time marketing something that I know is “just decent” but not great. I’d rather focus on my current WIPs, which I do think are more original, and better written too.

With that, though, I find myself once again back at square one: which project to pursue? HURT is a crime fiction novel, and I’d like to be known as a dark crime fiction author who occasionally forays into horror. So do I work on the next crime fiction project… or continue the horror novella? (I don’t have any particular momentum on the novella, so all projects are more or less equal in terms of desire.) What would you do?

I’m feeling really bummed out about my fiction career right now. It seems like everyone and their brother is getting a book deal except me. I feel like the biggest loser. Even though I know the reality is harsh, and likely to get harsher with the economy the way it is (i.e. less likelihood of folks taking a risk on a new writer), it’s like this: finally having accepted that you will never be part of the “in crowd,” and that’s OK because they’re boring, you set your sights on the A/V Club instead. Except that even the A/V geeks won’t let you in, because you bring nothing–no new talent, no new insight–to them. How freaking depressing is that??

Part of the problem is the novel I’m shopping. It’s my first. I mean my first-first. It’s gone through many iterations and it’s finally at the point where I think it’s reasonably publishable. Was it a practice novel? Yes, oh yes. Should it be published? I don’t know anymore. Other writers tell me that I’m likely to find an agent who will believe in it and take it (even if it needs revisions) and try to sell it, but I have something like 80-90 rejections. Small potatoes? I don’t know. I do know that by now, I could try to sell better. If I did that, my other option with this first novel is to sell it to a zine that is taking novels that won’t get published, but that the author would like to see the light of day. (That really is in her guidelines!) I’m not sure if my novel fits that description. And I’m not sure I should have spent so much time and money already only to can it and move on to the next project (actually a sequel, but could work as a standalone).

I think it doesn’t help that I’ve completely lost momentum on the novella, and I haven’t written any short stories that are in any shape to send out to zines. I just don’t feel like anyone cares whether I write fiction. Probably no one does. So then why do it? Because I care? Why should I care? I have better things I could do with my time. Like learn how to play with my kids.

Oh well. I’m whining. But anyone else ever faced this?