That’s right. GET OUT, novel.
I want you out of my head and onto the page!
I am writing The Eternal Moon. Day 1 was yesterday. It’s exciting to finally get inside the world of my protagonist, Jordan Rush, and explore his story.
As the title implies, this story is not contemporary. It’s science fiction. And I have had this story in my head since 2018. It’s not easy lugging around a novel idea. Those backburners can get worn out. It’s also not good to grow a story in the mind because it has no life without getting onto the page for others to read.
So, I’m kicking it out, all 90,000 words.
This stage marks the beginning of a new chapter for me. Since I was 15, I wanted to be a writer. Before that, I wanted to be a filmmaker, but that was an even more expensive pursuit than my golfing hobby, which I didn’t take seriously enough to let it burn a hole in my pocket. At that age, filmmaking felt like too much of a financial risk. And no, I was not thinking about short films at that age. My appetite was bigger than my stomach. I wanted to make big-budget films to fit my big, lofty ideas. Writing became my subsequent best pursuit, and my love for words has grown.
Becoming a good writer, though, takes hard work and years of practice. And practice I did. That’s all I did when I wasn’t playing a video game or watching a movie. I wrote.
Being a writer makes the future feel uncertain. Stability matters for any human being. Creatives, like me, take on a lot of pressure to perform well. And writing a novel makes that a thousand times harder to live with. And there’s no stability in writing. At least, it’s not given. It’s forged by the hard work of the writer after the hard work of writing the novel.
When you love something, like writing, there’s no good feeling associated with not doing it. It’s a love/hate relationship. Ironing out the hate part takes deep self-awareness and self-discipline.
The drive to write this novel hit me on a day in April, which day I don’t recall. One thing has led to another, and the progress has flashed past me like ten miles of urban life on the train to Seattle. That day – that evening, rather – my girlfriend, Brianne, was working on something behind me, while I sat down at my computer. I took a deep breath and started typing. 20 minutes later, I had over a thousand words about the backstory to my novel. The next day, I doubled my word count.
I had never felt such a blazing fire of creative momentum. The ideas poured out of me, and it felt so good I put other tasks aside to push my creativity forward.
So, looking ahead, I decided on a deadline. Giving myself a few months to write this novel, I marked December 15 as the day I would stop writing to survey the words left in my wake.
Yesterday, I wrote 450 words.
Today, I’m procrastinating. The girlfriend and I flew to Idaho for the weekend, and now, we’re at the airport, waiting to get on the next flight to Seattle. So, we’ve been busy.
My promise to myself to write, though, stands. I’m so passionate about this story, I don’t feel reluctant to press forward. I will get this novel written, no matter what.
It will see the light of day. It has been served an EVICTION notice.
GET OUT. Go live rent-free in the reader’s mind. They won’t mind.