On Becoming A Finisher

I’ve got to get Doleful Creatures done. Here are the reasons:

• I’ve been stringing this book along since 2013
• Other books – notably The Hermit of Iapetus – are waiting in the wings
• I had a dream over the weekend wherein more ideas for another book came. Though I have to wonder how I’d get a book out of the following:

Rainey Creek, of the Weather-Man

Hermit lives up a creek, is “uncommon strong.” Wears colorful clothing because local homeless shelter gets repeat donations form a theater company. Has one eye missing, lost it in the Navy. Does not have glass eye, brags about holding water in the socket. He did have glass eye but he had a sneezing fit and the eye popped out and fell in the creek. He gets visions of trout and snails and sand and underwater currents and bubbles from it from time to time. There is another hermit living in the same area, his brother. They have not spoken to each other in 43 years. “There is too much time to think” he says. “To think about the present. There is not enough time to remember the past.”

He also builds log dams on the creek, and is always hauling around enormous blocks of wood to plug holes in the dam. He’s a big man, more Andre the Giant in build.

It’s a mess to be sure. But it could be something, if I could get Doleful Creatures finished.

I think I need beta readers again. Certainly for the first 25 chapters of the book – which have been added to, rearranged, and re-written. So if you want to read the, drop me a line.

So beta readers, Step One.

Step Two: The latter portions of the book are, in my humble estimation, good. I just need to get to the point I can bridge beginning and end.

Reasons to be optimistic: The original story I started writing for Doleful Creatures is about 95% gone, and I’m pretty sure with the most current revisions, that percentage will go up to about 99%. And that’s fine. Everywhere I read I hear that the original reason you start writing a book is going to get lost in translation as you continue to think about the story you want to tell and how it gets told.

Reasons to get off my butt and finish this: Becoming a finisher.