So, some time around 8:10 or so, local time, I stopped saying, “I’ve got this book I’m writing . . .” I stopped saying, “I’ll finish this one day . . .” I stopped saying, “Maybe I’ll do it tomorrow . . .”
It was at that time I put down a bag of bricks that’d I’ve been carrying for twenty five years, and said, “Hey, that wasn’t’ so hard.”
I finished the first novel I set out to write. I finished Transporting.
One scene was all I had to write, and I had a pretty good idea about what I was going to say, because I’ve had all of about a week to realize this was coming. I started working on Chapter 46 on Saturday, and it’s been one day after another, boom, boom, boom, so knowing I was going to end it last night was no big surprise.
I decided I was going to do it in my own style. Needed a nice, long turn to keep the mind occupied, so I went deep in the well and loaded up the full YouTube recording of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Right there, I had 44 minutes to get it done, and the moment the the piece started I was away.
And it was so good.
I wasn’t in any zone; well, maybe the Twilight Zone, because it felt a little surreal to realize I may have actually started this novel listening to the same music back in 1989–on vinyl, no less! But I wrote. I had it set in my mind as to what I wanted to say, and I said it.
Like some cosmic synchronicity, as the music was coming to an end–and believe me, I know that particular piece extremely well, not only having owned the recording since 1974, but having heard it played live twice–I was at an end for the writing. Just yesterday, about the time I was getting lunch, I figured out just how I wanted to end that particular scene, but it wasn’t until I had that last bit written down that I realized, “My character, being the smart ass they are, would probably say the following, because they’d get off on annoying the hell out of the locals.” So as the grand finale blasted out, I got the words in, I dated the material–since this scene was being written like a journal–and . . . that was it.
As I said later on Facebook, “I had already written ‘The End’ before I started.” And that was true. When I’d set up the scenes in Scrivener, I’d decided this would be the last one, and had set a “The End” then and there. So no need guessing, no need thinking I needed more. That would be it, and no more beyond that point.
I didn’t need to worry about that; everything was right and good at that point, and the tale was told.
I saw my Muse before I started writing and told her about what was going to happen. She was happy: no, I think, “ecstatic” is closer to the actual expression. Either way, my Muse got me to where I am today, though she’ll say, “This is all you, Ray. You did this.” Yes, I did, but there was help in ways people can’t imagine.
At least I don’t have to pistol whip my Muse around, because, above all other things, she knows writing makes me happy.
I am very happy now. Can’t you tell?
