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10/01/2006: "Delicate Equilibrium"
The past few days have been as good as it gets in the laborious process of writing. There are many ups and downs during the process, but this is just about the highest - the moment when the first draft is finished. Other highs include the moment when you get first get an idea that seems to you to be perhaps brilliant, at least capable of being turned into 100,000 words of prose, and the moment when you are sent the complementary copies of the finished product (publication day is a complete wash-out, because unless you're a million-seller there are no launch parties or 'telemessages', no phone-calls from other celebs gushing over your 'deathless'). The lows are plentiful. The moment when you realise, after forty thousand hard-fought words, that it isn't going to work; the awful feeling that you've written this before; the endless editing; the bad reviews or, even worse, the complete lack of reviews.
But the moment when you've got to the end of the race and you've got what appears to be a fairly decent slab of text, when the horrors have yet to come - of having to re-read it fifteen times during the course of which you discover that it isn't quite as wonderful as you thought, of arguing with editors, of seeing for the first time the cover that the publisher wants to foist on you - that is the best. You can temporarily turn to other matters - perhaps a short story, perhaps actually reading a novel. You can, in short, do what you always imagined writers did. You can pretend that you are an artist and that you have created something wonderful.
But it is a delicate equilibrium. It lasts too short a time. So you had better enjoy it.
Keith McCarthy on Sunday, October 1st 2006 @ 10:55 AM GMT [link]