"You won't get wise with the sleep still in your eyes..."

When I first set out to write The Prankster's Reward, I had a target of 120,000 words.

One of my main gripes about fantasy fiction is that it tends to take a writer 10 years and three or four 1,000 page books to tell a story and I didn't want to do that--not yet, anyway. I wanted to write a relatively compact adventure tale that would leave readers craving more but wouldn't take such a huge investment of time to get to the end.

More than eight months later, the novel is done. It comes in at about 85,000 words, which means my initial word count was fairly accurate. It will take a lot of work to make it even readable enough to get someone else's opinion on it. Most of that work will be in adding depth to the characters and providing the backstory to the things I revealed in the final chapter and epilogue.

I've learned quite a few things along the way, particularly in the last month, when I declared my own personal 'writing Waterloo' and told myself that if I didn't get any consistency in my writing, do it with any discipline at all, then I was just going to quit and admit that life had won. The goal was impossible. Save yourself the frustration and spend more time with the family. Perhaps you can take something away from my struggles.

First, I am too hard on myself. Looking back, it's amazing that I was able to finish it at all, giving everything that was going on in my life. A battle with blood sugar, documented here. The impending foreclosure (or, hopefully, short sale) of my house, which I've written about here under the tag 'the third miracle.' The care and recent passing of my father to early onset Alzheimer's. It is okay to let things like this eat into your time, but it is not okay to let them defeat. All things pass and, as Winston Churchill once said: If you're going through hell, keep going.

Second, I allowed my own story to drag on to the point where even I got bored with it. If you're not invested in something you're writing, how can the reader be? Henry David Thoreau, a guy who knew a thing or two about writing, advises us to 'strike while the iron is hot.' A writer who tries to tell his story after the passion has faded is like trying to iron a shirt with a cold brick. Or something to that effect.

As romantic and cool as it may sound to say you can write something as you go along, the reality is that it's a lot more practical to plan things out ahead of time. That way, a plot point that you suddenly think about in chapter 21 doesn't require writing chapters 3-17. When I go back to edit this novel--and by edit, I mean rewrite--I'll do it the right way. I'll have a full outline. Character sketches. Back stories. I will set up a desk in my garage, beyond the reach of my wifi, and close the door to all distractions.

And go back I will. Write I will. For at the end of myWaterloo, I had an 18-12 record for days writing vs. days non-writing, and I know can improve on that. It doesn't matter what's going on in your life. Your dreams are still out there, waiting patiently.