I’ve been attempting to finish my novel for years. I had ordered it so that it alternated chapters between the present and its dark past, and then another way so that it was all in the present with flashbacks of the childhood. Then I started to rewrite the whole thing, with my protagonist as a child pushing herself along until she’s an adult and has her own child.
I’ve had it in first person, second person, and now it’s in third person. I’ve even tried to cram the whole darn thing in to the course of a day, like Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. And it turns out that I’m my greatest enemy, because each and every time I sense that I’m about to finish, I decide that this can’t possibly be the very end of my novel. So, I change it.
Here comes the punch line to this horrid joke: I have spent years doing this. Two years of my life. Disappeared. Just like that.
Now, because of the circumstances in my “real life” I’m at that point where there’s not just a fork in the road, it’s an entire cutlery service for twelve people. I can no longer safely predict how much time I’ll have to write a to-do list or a check, let alone a novel with a coherent beginning, middle and end. And that’s the scary part, living with the unknown.
But it’s not all gloom. There are good points to remember: I’m a master of the material I have before me. I know it as well as I know any of my “real” children, its peaks, its ravines, its moments of indecision. The writers in the BWW have been terrific in their support. And I have proven to myself as well as my colleagues that I am unafraid of revision.
After much moping and worrying, I now know the thing that is going to make me finish this book. I’ve finally come to that place where I’m looking forward again. I’m looking ahead to the finish line but only a step ahead of myself. Eking out a few minutes every day to think about what has to happen next, the very next thing after the paragraph that I’m wading through right then, and then doing that. Just that. Footprints on the sand just before the water rushes in and erases everything.
Devi Laskar is a founding member of the Book Writing World. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University, an M.A. in South Asian Studies from the University of Illinois, is a rabid Tar Heel basketball fan, is working on a couple of novels and has 39 days to go before she finishes the first year of her art-a-day challenge.