Guess what!
After nearly four months of daily work and literally hundreds of hours of review, outlining, and writing, the revision of my novel is done! Break out the champagne! Do some weird and embarrassing dance moves! Ugly cry a little! Finally I can say that I'm finished writing and move on to the next item on that silly little list I made like a year and a half ago, right? Right??
...right?
Right. Well, damn it.
I'm kidding, mostly. Obviously. We all know I'm very keenly aware of where I am in the process of "writing" (i.e., planning, plotting, outlining, drafting, revising, editing, etc.) this novel. For readers who don't want to zoom in on that tiny text, I'm at that top middle of the orange bit, right before "Rewrite again" and "Anxiety! Impostor Syndrome!". So, you know...still very much towards the beginning of the process.
Seriously—in this context, what does finishing even mean? Writing a book is Sisyphean. Masochistic. I push the big rock to the top of the hill, type the last sentence, and then let go and watch the rock roll all the way back down. Start again, from the beginning—and when I'm done, I go off to write another book. Roll another rock. Finishing doesn't matter, right? Right??
A digression: I finished the first draft of this novel in August of 2024. At the time I thought (and declared, very publicly, in this newsletter) that I'd be querying agents by the beginning of 2025. But weeks into the process of revising I realized—to quote one of my favorite bits—that "I don't know what any of this s#!$ is and I'm f@$#ing scared." I set off on a long, convoluted journey of reading, note taking, taking notes on my notes, outlining, and finally revising that took 16 months—four times my original estimate—because, again, I had no idea what I was doing (and, also, to be fair, because my life fell apart a little there in the middle).
A tangent to my digression: There's this quote from Ursula K. Le Guin in her story "Sur" that reads something like this: "[H]ousekeeping, the art of the infinite, is no game for amateurs." The story is brilliant, of course, and the quote fits best in the specific context of that story—but it's also a microcosm of much of her later thinking & writing & feminism (ideas probably best captured in essays like "The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction" and "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle Writes the Book", which are chock full of nuance and wisdom). The point here, however, is that Le Guin gets at the idea that the infinite, repetitive, often thankless tasks like housekeeping—washing dishes, cooking, cleaning; tasks that must be done again and again and again—contain an inherent challenge, dignity, and value...and are, perhaps, better suited metaphors for the act of writing than what we typically see.
This brings me back around to my original question (finally!): Does finishing matter when something is never truly finished? Yes. Obviously. Cooking a delicious and nourishing meal for yourself and others is always gratifying. Cleaning house brings peace and contentment each time it’s done. Typing that last sentence on this draft felt just as good, if not better, than the first time.
So, yeah: there’s still a long way to go until I finish this novel, and I’ll do it all again on the next one—but I’ll continue to learn from and be proud of every milestone along the way.
PS – Sorry this is coming a day late! I hope y'all have a good Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Times are challenging right now; today is a good reminder to take care of yourself, spend time with loved ones, and to try to put some good into the world, if you can. I'm sending you peace and love, wherever you are!
