Update time…

So-o, looking back to April (yes, I know, where do the months fly away to?), I reported that WALL #4 was in its denouement phase, with end sequences coming together, “but without being quite there yet.”

On July 11^th,when deferring this update, I advised that I was in the middle of writing “…an important but proverbially thorny passage”

What I did not say then, was that the writing since April has been consistently stormy and thorny. So in fact I know exactly where the months have gone to, even as the days and weeks have ground by.

Occasionally a reader will ask why the writing of a book, and this book in particular, takes so long. Although I cannot really answer to the why, beyond the story being a complex and multi-layered one, with a large cast of characters, I can speak more readily to the “how.”

USA

In this instance, the writing hit a wall (no, not Night’s Wall, though it may have characteristics in common. 😀 ) very soon after the April update. In this case, the “wall” involved the writing becoming increasingly slow and simultaneously starting to gyre – i.e the writing process was circling the story rather than advancing it.

UK/AU/NZ

Over the years, I’ve gotten increasingly adept at recognizing the signs early and looking for the cause and solutions. Almost invariably, this involves doing a back-cast to find where the narrative began to go astray. When the glitch is particularly deeply embedded, as it was in this case, it may also necessitate the question, “Is there a way I can tell the story differently?”

In terms of the perennial “planner vs pantser” discourse, the implication is, “In order to achieve the same outcome, as envisaged by the plan?”

USA

The answer, though, may be that the plan itself must be amended, in line with von Moltke the Elder’s observation that: “No plan survives contact with the enemy.”

UK/AU/NZ

While the story is (definitely!) not the enemy, progressing it—particularly knowing publishers and readers are waiting—can sometimes feel like a battle. This was a case in point, since the necessary back-cast took me all the way back to the point of the January update. “Oh, no!” indeed.

In this case, it was the plan that needed amending, chiefly that a point in the action I believed I was writing toward, needed to come before the sections I’d completed between January and April. And, “of course”, once that material was written, the ensuing sections required consequential revision.

USA

So that, dear readers, is the road—or battlefield—I have been traversing. I am aware this is not good news for all of you waiting for word of “the end”, but there is, in fact, a modicum of positive tidings—which is that I have now, however bloodied and battle-scarred, but undefeated in spirit, arrived at the final showdown.

UK/AU/NZ

Yes, “I know!”, after three books—and many years of writing this one! I do hope you will feel, as I do, that this is “not nothing.” However, by way of a caution, I am not 100% certain exactly how much writing will be required to wrap it up—and glitches of the kind encountered over the past quarter are never in “the plan.”

An Alternative Update, Channeling the Great Dorothy Parker, 1893 – 1967

(Bowing to 21^st century sensibility, I’ve omitted the ‘all caps’ of the original.)

“…I simply cannot get that thing done yet never have done such hard night and day work, never have so wanted anything to be good and all I have is a pile of paper covered with wrong words. Can only keep at it and hope to heaven to get it done. Don’t know why it is so terribly difficult or I so terribly incompetent.”

Here be dragons — but we soldier on!

Except in the case of WALL #4, you may rest assured I am doing it and as observed in April, as well as in the spirit of Dorothy Parker, the “the only way to…[reach the end]…is to stay glued to the writing desk and keep going.” So I reiterate my commitment to doing just that, and also to “keep you updated as soon as anything of moment happens.”

Otherwise, the next update will be in the first week of December. I’ll advise the exact date closer to the time.

Open for some serious “final showdown” business…