"Finishing the Hat"

Sometimes I just want to write.  Not rewrite.  Not edit.  Or revise.  Years of research and thousands of hours of writing have produced 85,000 words of text that make up the work of my life.  I’ve never worked this hard on any single endeavor.  Ever. 

I tell myself that once I reach a milestone like finish an outline for my agent, research this aspect of the Mississippi River, refine my perspective on the effects of integration, tighten the syntax on that chapter, get the entire book to a readable place so that others can start reading for me, and on and on…once I reach this milestone I’ll blog, do my laundry, clean my house, call my dad, organize the millions of papers my kids have brought home from school…but there is always another book-related milestone rising up in front of me before the current one is done. 

It seems over-simplified to say that I am exhausted.  Sometimes it takes all of the discipline, power of the human spirit, carpe diem, and all that jazz that I can muster to even open up my laptop and start again.  I haven’t taken a day off in months.  I write and I write and I write and when I look up I realize that there is still so much more writing to be done. 

There are things about my book that are like a mad, hot love affair. Paragraphs that so capture exactly what I want to say, that when I read them my heart sings.  For every paragraph like that there are hundreds of others that look at me with weary eyes like half dressed, hungry children wondering when I will find a solution for them.  In the words of Booker Wright, “I’m on my way.”

I like to do endurance events.  I work out a lot because I can justify putting off my writing to take care of my body.  I ran a half marathon and completed a metric century, but those things are a cakewalk when compared to the persistent effort required to complete a book.  Too much time being unfocused and I can lose it.

The truth of each moment that needs to occur in my book come together to make up a pile of wordless feelings.  My job is to put all of those moments down in a compelling order, described in a way that illuminates them – all this while sticking like a magnet to the truth of history.  Every detail, every moment must be fact-checked and double checked.  If I work too slowly, I can lose the essence of the story that’s in my soul, too quickly and I can do it a disservice, failing to properly translate it into words. 

The intangible science of writing is tormentingly fascinating.  I watch myself with awe.  Sometimes I wonder what will happen to me if I finish this book and no one reads it.  The world is full of artists like me – people who did the work, put in the time, let their very lives slip away so that they could finish the hat.  I know that this work is creating in me character.  I know that at the end of every writing session, just like with weight training, I am that much stronger, I am that much better as a writer.  Sometimes I watch the elite athletes who win marathons.  Some of them cross the finish line looking frail, spent, and exhausted, falling into the arms of complete strangers who congratulate and catch them at the same time.  I get it.  

Oh, and if one more person says, "You haven't finished your book yet," I might burst into flames.