[thenightwriterblog] The Night Writer: Novella

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Posted by The Night Writer:
Novella
http://thenightwriterblog.powerblogs.com/posts/1179930722.shtml


    "Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the yard and
                                 shot it."
                              -- Truman Capote

   I don't have the experience, yet, of being an author finishing a book
   so I don't know if Capote's words are apt. It seems to me the
   writing-publishing experience is more like being a parent and having a
   child leave the nest. As the parent of a soon to be 19-year-old still
   in the nest but beginning to make her own way I marvel at how what
   Iâve âcreatedâ has taken on a life of her own; how the countless hours
   spent shaping and imagining and agonizing over just the right word has
   inspired dialogue with subtleties, nuances and complexities I never
   realized were possible, and how a true character has emerged
   fully-formed and bursting to go forth.
   For years this book was mainly blank pages; pages that consumed my
   life and were never far from my thoughts no matter what else I
   happened to be doing. Day by day those pages were filled, and while
   there are things Iâd like to go back and rewrite thereâs no guarantee
   that the story would be even better than it is now; even so I wrestle
   with the temptation/obsession to continue to tweak and polish.
   Will anyone else understand the humor of page 112, or appreciate how
   difficult it was to write Chapter 19? Certainly not at the level I do,
   but that knowledge is for my own book, the one written on my heart.
   Now, though, it is time to see this through; to be proud to see all
   the time, work and love realized in a tangible package; to admire not
   just the cover but the spine; to breathe deep the aroma of the fresh
   pages and the glue that holds them together.
   It is good.