Progress or Lack Thereof

On Tuesday, my favorite author of all time, George R. R. Martin, released the fifth book in his fantasy series. (This would be the book A Dance With Dragons in the series A Song of Ice and Fire for those unacquainted with his work - and if you are, get thee to a library right away and get a copy of Game of Thrones.) I spent the majority of the day (I requested a vacation day from work) with a group of my closest friends reading said book. We drove to Burlington, MA to see GRRM and get him to sign our books. It was an exhausting and utterly inspiring day.

Reading George's books always puts me in the frame of mind to want to write and write and write. I say he's my favorite author of all time - not only because I enjoy the story he's created, but because he is a fantastic writer. He has a wonderful sense of words and character voices and he knows how to make a huge emotional impact on his readers without clobbering them over the head every other chapter. And he's unapologetic about his process. It took him almost six years to finish this book. And I don't begrudge him a single one of those days. How long have I been nominally working on Face the Flames now? Ten years? More? People in my life are forever urging me to finish. Telling me to just go on and find a publisher. Become famous. Retire young.

What do they know.

Writing is ridiculous. Taking it from a logical viewpoint, I don't understand why any of us chooses to do it. Taking it from my own viewpoint (often far from logical, I admit), I can't understand how any of us can ever stop. Or choose not to. Or quit.

Inspiration picture for Ariana, a very troublesome character indeed.

My current plan is to work on this book and ONLY this book until I'm done. I wanted to finish by year's end. We will see how far I get. I'm fixing things still. I can't just keep going without doing it because the biggest fix is a character that has always bothered me. She's one of my six point of view characters and the only one that I feel little emotional connection with. I've never known who she is, barely even who I wanted her to be. She's based on all of the female friends I've ever had - in parts caring, petty, jealous, gorgeous, and projecting an awesome self-confidence that she never feels in her heart. And up until now I've not been able to stitch all of those pieces into a coherent person.

Another inspiration picture for Ariana.

But George has inspired me. He finished his behemoth. (Kong, he called it.) And it's brilliant. More than worth the wait. So I'm going to be like him. Close my ears to my friends and family (I love you all and I appreciate the support, but sometimes it's all too much), and just write it the way I need to write.

Perhaps then it will be brilliant.