Every Day

I've been working on this book for just over two years now and I'm finally starting to feel like I'll finish it. I had no idea what I was getting into when I started, only that I thought I could finish it in a year and that I'd be sitting at home writing something else and living off the fat paycheck I'd received for 7 Days. Things don't always work out the same in real life.

In real life it takes work. Daily work. Everyday this book requires me to write it. If I don't write it, it doesn't get written. And so I found myself 18 months into my dream project with it barely even started because I'd started and stopped and trashed it and started over time after time after time. And after umpteen times of this, I wondered if I was even capable of writing a book. 

I mean, people have told me they like my writing, and I've even gotten published (although one of the publications went out of business a year or so ago), but I've only ever written short stories. I've written essays and blogs and small pieces here and there, but nothing of the magnitude of a real book. With a front and back cover and more than just a few pages in between. 7 Days is no book report or short story or school assignment. 7 Days is...it's life.

And how do I get life down on paper? The answer is the same no matter who I ask: "You just write it." Apparently that's the only way things get written. I've tried staring at the computer waiting for the book to write itself, and two years later, it still is not written. But six months ago I decided not writing was for the birds.

I started doing what I do best: short stories. I looked at other books I've read and can relate to (Dark Nights of the Soul, The Year of Magical Thinking, Dog Years to name a few), and I realized that a book is nothing more than a collection of short stories that tie each one together. They can be tightly or loosely woven. There can be ten stories (I hear they call these chapters) or twenty-four. It all depends on the story I'm telling, and the way it ends up together. 

So these little excerpts I've been posting are the beginning to each short story. They all relate to each other in that they all are my experience with my father's death. And they all relate to what I learned from that experience. They all simply tell the story. Which means that unbeknownst to me, I've been writing this book all along. It's nice to finally figure that out.

Now that I know that I've been writing the book, I'm starting to worry that when I put it all together it won't make sense. I'm trying to put that worry aside and just concentrate on the writing. Every day. Every. Day.