Finishing What Was Started Part 1: The Beginning

I began Coppertown during the summer of 2013, in the waning days of my Portland, OR life. I wish I could sum up the time. The summer of 2013, August especially, was a whirlwind of finality. I do mean finality. The oldest date I can find for this project is August 5, 2013 when “Coppertown: First Thoughts” launched at Sophia Ballou.

“First Thoughts” was not something that I continued. It was sort of a short story, mostly a little vignette about a young couple in a fabricated Colorado mountain town. The two were in a restaurant. There was some conflict and ultimately I wanted one of them to murder the other.

The true is, by August of 2013, I had been writing for The Sophia Ballou Project for a few years at a break neck pace. I may have been getting a little hard up for material by then too. I mean, I had written a serialized novel in 2011, twelve chapbooks plus twelve critical pieces in 2012. In 2013 and in 2014 I wrote poetry which resulted in Cockroaches and Geese. At the time I began Coppertown, I had it in my mind to write a novel.

Writing a novel is not a difficult task, no matter what anyone says or what anyone thinks. To write a novel you just have to have an idea, some time and a bunch of tenacity. With Coppertown I had an idea, but that was it. In August of 2013, my son turned one, we left Portland and returned to Denver. The whole thing about Coppertown, was that it was set in Colorado. It was set in Colorado, I think, because I wanted to get excited about a return here. Truth be told, I did not want to leave Oregon. I dreaded returning to Colorado, just like I've dreaded it here for the last four years. But I remain, and Coppertown remains.

It's been a struggle to write this story. It's like the story that just doesn't want to get told. I have written it at a pace of about 10,000 words a year. This is no way to work. To put it in perspective, both of my published novels, Dysphoric Notions and Undertakers of Rain took 7 and 8 weeks to write, respectively. The difference between 8 weeks and five years is about 4 years and 10 months. No one is the same writer over that kind of time, and no one is the same person over that kind of time.

Fits and starts aside, please know that this has not been my only project in the last five years. I've written dozens of short stories, and even a novel. But Coppertown remains a nagging pain in the ass. And I think this is the case because it's unfinished and just being unfinished is something that drives me crazy.

At the rate of 10,000 a year, it will take me at least another year to finish it.

Or will it? I hope to get this nagging pain in the ass off my desk quickly. Before the first day of fall at the latest. We'll see.

If you have a project like this, one you just can seem to get completed, I hope you'll consider finishing it now. What a better time of year than the end of summer?

Next time:

Finishing What Was Started Part 2, the end of the beginning

Finishing What Was Started Part 3, the middle

Finishing What Was Started Part 4, the beginning of the end

Finishing What Was Started Part 5, the end