Be Ruthless

Look, I'm not going to lie (as my son often says).  I want to think I've written 89 perfect and contiguous pages of the novel that has lately sat with me (weighed on me).  I want to tell myself.  Hey.  Good job.  Only two-thirds of the book to go.  I've already written this book twice, after all.  I've already done the time.  I've celebrated completion on two separate occasions, only to have the victory medal stripped from my scrawny neck.

Perhaps, my agent said.

Perhaps you should consider, an editor said.

And, yes, sure, on a chapter by chapter basis (the chapters read in isolation from each other) these brand new 89 pages work pretty well. 

Put the chapters together, though, and you have a momentum problem.  You have a stutter stall of tension.  I have tried to pretend that such problems don't exist.  I have tried to look ahead to page 90.  Foist myself upon it.

But the truth is the truth, and you aren't a writer if you can't be ruthless with yourself.  At 3 AM this morning, I tossed 40 some pages that took me weeks to write.

I cried a little.

Then I turned the music on and danced.

When critics wonder, as some critics will, why books take so long to write, they should perhaps consider the buckets and buckets and buckets of words that get tossed to the virtual floor.