It's not ironic

But it certainly is coincidental.

The day after I declared that I would not, in fact, devote this here site to the production and publication of a novel in one year's time, I got an e-mail via the folks at the SBWC. It was an about a year-long workshop, the goal of which is...to write a novel.

Not publish it, mind you. Just write it, and bring it to the point where it's ready for submission.

Lynn Vannucci, the person who's running the show, had this to say in the e-mail:

In all the years I've been working as an editor, I find the biggest roadblock for the new writers I work with is accountability. Their talent is apparent, their ideas inspired, but their projects languish because they don't yet know how to use their time like a professional writer to bring their work to fruition.

Which is exactly what I was talking about on June 2 when I referred to responsibility. To say that that I'm intrigued by this opportunity is a bit of an understatement. But I do pay attention to coincidences of this depth, and I call them by the fancy name of synchronicity.

So, I'm going to give this a shot. I need to have the first 30 pages of my project to her by June 20, which means that I need to rewrite the first chapter (it's not very good, being, as it is, an unpublished short story from 1995), and possibly create an entirely new second chapter.

I discovered, via a helpful ass-kicking by a friend of mine, many of the reasons why I stalled out on this particular book. Beyond my usual penchant for never finishing things, that is. She had me commit to producing a 500-word synopsis of the book, which is difficult enough, but even more so when the book isn't finished.

There are two main reasons it's not finished. First, I don't have an idea about the ending that's clear enough to keep me moving forward. I've always had a couple of major plot points that I knew were going to occur, but without at least some idea of the end point--even if it turns out to be the wrong idea--it's damnably difficult to keep things moving. There's nowhere to move towards.

Second, the major event of the book was something that happened to a friend of the protagonist, rather than the protagonist himself. I should've realized, back when I was half-heartedly asking myself why anyone should care about what happens to this secondary character, that this was an issue.

So. Because the decision to push the major event away from the protagonist was a result of events that happened in the first chapter, which was written as a short story and not a novel chapter, I need to rearrange a whole bunch of stuff. And because the second chapter flows from the plot error in the first chapter, and is in fact entirely dependent on it, I either need to write a new one, or see if one of the subsequent chapters can serve in its stead. Or I might just pick another chapter to serve as the first. Or maybe write some entirely new chapters. Or maybe, maybe write two entirely new chapters of an entirely new book I haven't even thought of yet.

I'm trying to subdue my panic. Breathe.

I have a lot of work to do, not much time to do it, and no guarantee that my offering will secure me a place in the workshop.

But it's something. At least I'm doing something different, instead of sitting at my desk with a sick heavy ball in my stomach, wondering how the hell I'm going to fix my entire life so that I can do with it what I wish.

Instead, I have a task: 30 pages by June 20. Manageable. Doable.

I'll let you know how it goes.