I've often heard of writers who take 10 years or more to complete a book. I always thought that sounded unreal, maybe a little hype. . .but this effort was a saga to be sure.
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I didn't go to school to learn how to write (that should be evident in the book, haha). I originally wrote this story out as a complete narrative. Yup, about 13 years ago. don't ask me why, I don't know how to write. I gave it to my mom who said, "There's a story in here..."
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Of course, since she was talented I was happy. That is until she dropped the bomb on me...
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"...now, have your characters tell it to me." she smiled, and handed this 100 thousand word manuscript back to me.
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Talk about a let down, instant depression set in.
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"Do you know how long it took me to write that?" I winced.
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"Of course I do, honey." She smiled. "And you really have what might be the world's longest outline, so this should be simple."
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It was simple all right. I 'simply' threw that thing on a shelf somewhere. I was done. 100 thousand words done. No way I had the energy or desire to go back and rewrite that thing. I was already sick of it. I put it away... for years.
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Then it occurred to me; I remembered an interview at some point where Aerosmith claimed they had played the song Dream On so many times they were literally ill when they performed it and took it out of their set. How could they take their own music out? How could they be sick of something they produced together?
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Worse than that, I now had to apply that same logic to my own manuscript. Crap!
So I took it out, dusted it off and went to work trying to figure out how to have my characters tell the story. I had to give them personalities, voice. In some cases I had to invent new characters (like alberto) to have a dialog that helped to present the scene. I'm not going to lie, it was brutal. I toiled over that thing for more years. I wrote, re-wrote, edited, edited again, ripped out chapters, paragraphs, sentences, words and more. I rearranged and edited more and I probably could've gone on for more years, tweaking and re-writing and re-editing. The truth is it likely would've been a much better work. But at some point I had to let it go, the story was told.
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In the meantime my mom had grown old and had health complications. She lost her eyesight and most of her hearing and eventually passed during the COVID 19 pandemic. She never got to read the changes I had made and obviously not the finished version.
She had challenged me with encouragement and love and believed I could complete the book. Mom's are awesome that way. Trying to finish the work was only one way I could honor her belief in me. In the end it was a labor of love, but I learned a lot and I believe it made for a better read.
You'll have to tell me.
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