Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold everything

This site was to meant to serve, in part, as a public declaration of intention, which is why I've got an intention tag. It was also meant to be a self-wielded goad, something to motivate me and keep me going because I said on these pages that I would do this or that thing. The distillation of the declaration that I wrote on April 28 is as follows:

That's what this is about. Within 365 days, I intend to sell my first novel.

I've come to the...well, I won't call it sudden...but I've come to the realization that that's well, stupid.

Not just the practical aspect of it, I always knew that I was asking the near-impossible of myself. But: it's a stunt. Let's see how clever and good and talented I can be. More importantly, it is, quite simply, a recipe for failure.

I've gone through some sea changes over the past few months which I won't go into here. But the mere fact of writing and publishing a single novel is not enough. There's more to writing, more to a writing life, than pulling that particular rabbit out of the hat. More has to happen than simply finishing a manuscript and then shuffling it from agent to agent to agent, passively hoping that my self-evident brilliance will strike the right person at the right time.

The simple fact is, nothing in this universe happens unless you make it happen. It doesn't matter how good I am or think I am, it doesn't matter how saleable my manuscript is, how well it fits with what's going to be published in the 2010 season. What matters is whether I make the changes to my entire life that I need to make so that I can create a life of writing.

What matters is whether I take responsibility.

What matters is whether I make this happen.

Every day that I don't do something that relates to my writing is a day that I've let go by without making something happen. It doesn't matter whether I'm working on the novel, working on an old short story, jotting down thoughts for a new one or looking at markets. The idea that I was just going to pop onto the scene with my precious manuscript and watch the world open up before me was worse than stupid. It was arrogant, and short-sighted.

So, I've changed the blog's tag line, up there in the banner. The arbitrary, 365-days to publication is gone. I'm keeping the novel's word count up there, because it is a bit of a motivator, but that's all.

Back in 1995, I had my first short story published in Home Planet News. The editor professed amazement that it was my first publication, which I took as the compliment that it was. She invited me to New York to do a reading at the issue launch party, which I did. And then what happened?

Nothing, that's what.

I'm not going to go into all the psychological complexities that probably underlay that long fallow stretch of nothing. I'm tired of trying to figure out how I got where I am. I'm only interested in where I'm going and how I'm going to get there.

I also said, back in April, that I would be chronicling three separate processes here: writing the novel; reorganizing my life around writing; selling the novel. I was wrong about that, too. There's only one process. One life to live, one process.

So, that's what this place is about.

And what did I do today? Well, I rewrote the first 500 words of chapter one in third person, because I've been wedded to my first person narrative, and I'm not at all sure I need to be. I'm still not. Tomorrow? An outline. Because during the struggle to produce a 500 word synopsis of the book (which I will also write about later this week), I realized that I really have no idea where this thing is going, which makes it awfully hard to move forward.

So there's that.

Moving on.