It is a rare thing to be able to write your first novel for money; and more rare still to be cashing checks from someone patient enough to understand you are learning on the job. Not every form of writing is the same ol’ Amish barn to raise, and it’s difficult to estimate progress when I am essentially inventing my working method as I go. I have this nagging sense I could be getting more done, and more quickly, but it’s rare that I don’t feel that way when I’m on any substantial project. That’s just that snapping, hungry pet called “Self-Criticism” I brought home from the pound many years ago.
It’s already one of the longest pieces of prose I have ever set down, and we are still very early in the draft. Word count comparisons to screenplays aren’t entirely useful, but by the time I get to “The End” I’ll have pasted enough together into sentences to constitute three or four screenplays at least. Put it that way and it wouldn’t intimidate me; but I won’t get to put these words that way.
I have been at this for months, and any day in this span I have worked on or even thought about this book, my overarching belief is that there’s no way I will actually do this. But I am kind of comforted by that, since that’s how I feel about every screenplay I set out to write. And it’s usually not until I am near to done with the first draft that I start to think anything like otherwise.