Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Done...done...sweet Jesus, at last I'm done!

I just finished a story that’s been messing up my mind for
a long time now. I started it in Paris way back in July and,
ever since, I’ve been struggling with it. It’s been a slow,
grim battle, but victory is mine. The last sentence has been
written, the final period has been placed, and the hazards
of my sloth and incompetence have been slapped into sub-
mission by my sheer writerly resolve. Now that the war
has been won, I can even indulge in a little nostalgia over
some of the more grueling campaigns. The hours I spent
staring at the page, my life ticking steadily by without
dredging out so much as a single coherent sentence. The
panic I felt when I realized that the geography of the Bene-
lux states DID NOT CONFORM with the scheme I had set
up in my fictional world. The sweet relief when I found a
way to write over that ghastly fact so that no one–unless
maybe they live there–will ever know. Oh, and the un-
stinting ordeal it was to convey the narrator’s inner tur-
moil without allowing the prose to "purple" too much.
That turmoil is over now, both on the page and in my
life. Yessirre, I’m free, free, free of that evil, evil, evil
story.

At least until I have to go back and revise it. But I’m try-
ing not to think about that right now.