I've been working my ass off in recent weeks. Every part of my day is scheduled. Someday soon, I'm going to take a day off and not schedule anything. My day centers around fiction writing. I now have the novel, which was 800 pages long in the first draft and 900 pages long in the second draft. This doesn't included aborted drafts before, between and after those to.
Monday I felt ready to give up. It was unthinkable that I'd consider it the day before. I wrote a woeful email to a friend in my writers' group saying that I couldn't have rewritten that opening chapter any better, and the group (including guest Ann Leckie) tore it up. I told him I was ready to drop the whole project after six years.
He told me: don't rewrite, cut. Go through it and just cut as much as I can, don't add anything to it until I'm finished. He also told me to quit bothering him with any thought I'm going to quit.
Since then, I've been cutting. In fact, I cut the entire first two chapters. That's after having cut a previous 8,000 word, 21 page chapter.
Ann Leckie had a story about Neil Gaiman, who was three-quarters the way finished with a novel, I don't remember which one. And looked at it and it wasn't working. He called his agent and said "It's not working at all. I can't finish. I'll have to return the advance. I'm so sorry."
His agent laughed and said, "Neil, you do this on every project. Get back to it and write."
It's well-known that every writer has a muse, but anti-muse, the voice that tells you your work is no good, has been a writers' secret for too long.
I'm meeting my deadline in January. The project is running on time.
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