writer’s report

The Lucidity Effect—that’s the working title for my novel-in-progress—is just shy of 70,000 words (my other novels are all about 100,000 words) and is ticking along, slowly but steadily.   (Thus the more infrequent blogging.)  And I’m so relieved because, at this point, it seems fairly certain that I’ll finish it.  That is, I’m pretty sure, very nearly sure, that this one will be a complete novel in the not-too-distant-future—unlike last year’s novel, around which I still have some scar tissue.

If this one is a go, maybe last year’s crash-and-burn was not a harbinger of All Novels to Come, you know?  Maybe I am not washed up, maybe I still have at least one more in me, maybe my wad has not been shot.

Toby Streams the Universe was the last time I finished something new, and I started Toby in late 2009—a lifetime ago in the current publishing climate!  I spent 2010 writing and editing Toby, which was fine, but then the 2011 novel ran aground and just would. not. go.  And, well, I guess I became nervous that there would be no more novels.

But, it would seem that, possibly, this is not the case.

On the other hand, any relief I might be feeling on this point is TOTALLY premature since I have not, in fact, finished Lucidity, and I’m an idiot to even allow myself a breath of relief, really, because OF COURSE this novel has lots of time to wipe the floor with me.  As novels are wont to do.

On the other other hand, there is a tipping point in every long project I’ve done where I can feel (do other novelists feel this?) that the bulk of the manuscript is behind me.  I’m doing the second draft now (I often do up to five drafts, but still).  Yes, it has patches where I roughed in scenes with dialogue only and bracketed bits such as [funny memory here] or [this scene sucks, rewrite, what is its point?], so it certainly isn’t fully fleshed out.  But still, having written all but the very end, and now going back through to fill in the blanks, there is a weight of material already in the can that gives me…confidence.  A little bit.  I think I can see the end from where I stand.

But, DUH, I’ll probably get a little further, even a few days from now, and definitely when I get my first beta-reader comments back and realize, with certainty, that the entire book is FUCKED and will take total and major rewrites and all this confidence was mere self-delusion.

I can go back and forth like this for days.

I’m aiming for a Summer 2013 publication.

Did I mention that Lucidity Effect is a about a woman who’s dreams have been infected with a parasitic entity? Sounds gross, doesn’t it?  Hee hee.

Lucidity Effect will be my eighth novel.  So I’ve been around this love/hate/indifference/despair/shame/tentative confidence cycle a hundred times at LEAST.  As far as I can tell, this is par for the course.  Actually, the oscillation of emotional torment on this one has significantly less amplitude than many of my previous novels.  Maybe I’m maturing?

I should say, Lucidity will be my eighth novel, if I finish.

Which I think, I’m pretty sure, I will.  Probably.

I guess it freaked me out more than I realized last year to start a novel that quit on me halfway through!  It’s like I’ve got the back-in-the-saddle jitters.  I still get excited about things in that failed novel, still want to read it.  I wonder if I’ll ever go back and write it, like maybe there is some skill-set I haven’t got yet that one day I will acquire and then I’ll realize, hey, I can write the Cupid and Psyche with aliens novel now!   That would be cool….

Blah blah blah, I’m just stalling.  Quit your blathering you lazy whiner and go write your 1000 words, Lassiter!