Sunday I hit my projected halfway mark on AVALON BURNING. Truthfully I don’t think the book is halfway done at all; that milestone was based on a novel of 100,000 words, and it’s clear that this book is going to be longer than that, more in line with my usual length of around 125,000 words. Which would mean that I have about another 80 pages to go before the halfway mark.
Still, the point of benchmarks is not to be predictive but to have quantitative measures of progress, and as a measure of progress I have to say that it feels pretty cool to realize how (relatively) quickly the book has gotten here. A month ago I was at page 50 and had only just begun my marathon sprint. I can definitely live with (and hopefully on) writing 100 pages a month.
Of course, I would rather write five great pages than 100 mediocre ones. But that mindset, while artistically admirable and full of integrity and all like dat, is exactly what has prevented me from ever trying to crank away. The few things I have published that were written in a blinding white full-throttle-down were some of the clunkiest things I have written. (No, I won’t name them.) But I have realized that the reason they were clunky wasn’t because they were written quickly but because they were written quickly under very tight deadlines that did not allow revision beyond a straight proofread. Every one of those (well, there’ve only been a few) was something that I would have been perfectly happy with had there been time to give them even one good going-over.
What I’m seeing with AVALON BURNING is that the prose reflects my style and will be what I want it to be upon thorough revision, and that the clunkers of awful or unclear lines or awkward staging are more like occasional speedbumps than the vast plain of rubble I had assumed would dominate the manuscript. It’s nice to think we can play out some mythical divinely inspired artiste and craft final, finished work in first draft, but that generally ain’t how it works. Michelangelos don’t as a rule bang out “David” in a white heat of flying marble dust. They carve out something that looks kinda like a guy and then start in on that. Gradually making the stone fit the shape in their mind.
And though that initial carving-out can be onerous — Sunday’s writing session was like digging through a mountain with a spoon — I genuinely love revision. To me it feels at least as creative as the initial writing, if not more, and I am hugely looking forward to leaving blue ink all over this sonofabitch when the first draft is finished. Which I’m doing my level best to be sure is sometime in November.