Finishing What Was Started Part 5, the end

Once I finished writing a screenplay for the fictitious movie, Blood Sucking Coal Miner Zombies I had absolutely no excuse not to finish my novel, Coppertown.

I've lived in Colorado for most of my life. Rather, I have lived here for far too long feeling like an outsider, an alien. I don't ski. I don't drive a Subaru, I loathe dogs. I don't care about the Broncos, the Nuggets, the Avalanche or the Rockies. In fact, I don't care about mountains, weed or fracking wells. And truth be known, I don't really like the sun.

But, here I am. And for the length of time I worked on Coppertown, I tried to stay upbeat and positive about the manuscript and about the state of Colorado.

But staying upbeat about a manuscript does not mean that it will get done, or even close to it. To think about a novel, to stay focused on the novel and writing the novel are really different things. It's a funny thing to think about, but when I started to write this manuscript, I just wanted to write a story about a girl and I wanted to do it in 50,000 words. I felt like the story was good enough to commit to 50,000 words. It took well over four years for me to write the first 30,000.

Once my son got off to Kindergarten, I make the completion of this manuscript priority number one. I mean, how much more time could I really think about it? How many more stupid screenplays could I possibly write? I now just had to do it.

There is no real lesson to learn here, and I am not really able to dispense with advice which I wouldn't want you to follow anyway. But here is what I did:

First, I decided to finish it.

Second, I decided to finish it by the launch of Umbrella Factory Magazine Issue 29 which happened on September 15^th.

Third, I made daily word count goals. I had approximately 20,000 words to finish the manuscript and I had less than 14 days to do.

And fourth, I chose to work from 8:30 until 10:30 Monday through Friday.

As you can imagine, it didn't leave much time to think, to waste or to contemplate the silly stuff I normally contemplate. It also meant that I needed to hurry. My normal process of scribbling in my composition notebook with my fountain pen for the first draft and then moving to the computer for the second draft would take too long. I finished the last 20,000 words composing straight to the computer. It was not a bad experience for me, just a different one.

Writing 20,000 words in about ten days is no small task. I did, however find it easier to do that the 7,500 words I was writing annually before.

So doing, it's over. I have completed the manuscript. As this stage I doubt I'll look at the thing again, perhaps some day, but not some day too soon. Thankfully, it's over. I am not obligated to think about it again.