Critical Mass

I suppose everyone has their professional superstitions. For me, its to avoid talking about a novel in progress until I’m sure I can see a story through to the end. It can make for painful, lonely months living with creatures of the imagination, pouring immeasurable mental energy into beings that live and breathe and do, dress and eat and fart, think and talk and grow.

It is lonely. These characters are so needy! Imagine single-parenting two dozen infants, minus bottles and diapers. Oh, but the midnight wake-up call is most assuredly there.

I avoid discussion of specific new works for fear of one thing: running out of profluence. Maintaining a steady flow of forward-moving words is the single most important aspect for me at the opening stages. The words must run and the story advance toward something, often an unknown, and that unknown can be daunting. It would be easier not to try, easier to recognize the futility of grasping at wisps in hopes of forcing them into a solid, a substance, a thing I can point to and say, “There!”

This weekend I get to pull the lid off that silence. My latest novel has achieved critical mass. I’m no longer inventing the figments of a void, but rather connecting the last pieces of a puzzle with finite space to go astray. All creative energy is bent toward that one objective. There are no more false starts and no more errant diversions.

This is not a declaration of success. This is merely a declaration of gratitude to reach the point on the trail where I can see clearly around the crags the whole way up to the summit. I know my steps. Now I just take them.

What point for you in long-form writing makes critical mass? In my case, for this novel, its seven months and about 45k words. I won’t push superstition further by sharing my finish-by date, but I do have an objective in mind.

See you at the summit!

##