In fact, I'm really delighted with most of it. Yes, I'm too close to the work to be objective, but it's still a nice feeling when you're on the swell of the [I'm a talentless hack/I'm better than buttered toast, I am] wave.
One of the weirder things about writing this novel is that I've spent most of the process thinking I'm almost done. Literally, I've spent two years thinking I'd be finished in a month, maybe two.
Holy molybdenum, I'm glad I didn't have any real clue. I would have given up in despair.
But now? I really am almost done. For sure. Liek woah. A month, maybe two. Just don't lay any bets on it.
How common is this
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Whenever I give a run-through of a manuscript, I like to trick myself into thinking that the latest incarnation of revisions is the last. The words are now perfect, and I've caught every mistake. There's nothing that could be tightened up any further without busting a socket in the prose. Nope. Not a thing.
Except for that. Oh, and that. And...oh bugger, time for another overhaul based on some feedback from this guy...and of we go. I think that one is done with a manuscript only once you are well and truly sick of revising it, and you will go crazy and get the book bound in human skin if you have to read through it one more time.
Ahem. All that to say...yes. I'd say this is a common state of mind. Actually being published will no doubt bring in things like working deadlines and such, but I actually enjoy deadlines. They are so motivating.
Ooh, I don't like deadlines. They add stress without making me work any faster.
But yes, every single draft seems fine to me - until I realise it isn't fine. Then I'm off and editing again.
It's kind of nice not seeing your own shortcomings until you're ready to move to the next level; much better for the ego!
I always think I'll finsih quicker than I eventually do, but like my writing mentor says, you gotta finish that first page to finish the first chapter.
If you keep looking at it that way one page at a time, one chapter at a time, writing a novel isn't nearly as daunting. Don't think about those four hundred pages you need or the mountain of rewrites. Just write until you're done.
Yeah. Though there is the circular-revision trap, where you feel the work is so permanently imperfect that it is never good enough to submit anywhere, and so never sees the light of day, even if it really has a fighting chance.
Travis: *nods* I think that's what saves me. I just work on one scene at a time, and I don't really think about anything else (or how much else there is to do yet.)
Is there an end?
When the book is published. Unless you want to pull a Stephen King and republish it a decade later with all the chapters and scenes you cut out of the first version.
I suspect there is grandeur in delusion.
It performs as a carrot.
When I told my wife a year ago my novel was a month from being done, I was sure that was the case.
Now, it's still a month from being done even though the fixes I'm working on now aren't the same ones I was working on in 2006.
So yeah, the almost done feeling is probably fairly common.
Malcolm
Bernita:
True; how far would any of us get if we really, really understood that it was going to take us another year?
Sun Singer/Malcolm:
*waves* Hi and welcome!
Mm. Yes. My spouse occasionally asks how the novel is coming along. He's wonderfully tactful about not bringing up my previous estimates.
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