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The Last Edit
Why my third novel will never see the light of day
There it sits.
The folder “Novel III” on my desktop. Statistics say: 342 pages. 12 chapters. 86,749 words. I haven’t changed anything in more than twenty months. Sometimes I open the file, scroll to the end, read the last sentence. Sometimes I close it right away, sometimes I stare at the cursor as it blinks steadily.
“The novel is good,” my editor said back then. “Just a few minor things, and it’ll be ready.” He’s probably right. It’s almost finished. Almost. Those few minor things would take a week to fix. Maybe three days. I still don’t do them.
I love writing. The typing, the pages filling up, the story slowly taking shape — that works well. I prefer writing to reading. It’s just the publishing that doesn’t work anymore. The first time was exciting, the second time okay. The mere thought of a third publication process makes me tired.
It’s not because the text is bad. The people who’ve read excerpts thought it was really good. My editor especially. Sometimes, when I skim a paragraph, I think: Yes, this works. I have plenty of ideas for more books. They accumulate in notes and beginnings on my phone, on scraps of paper, in various files. A fourth novel draft is already a good 100 pages long. I neither have writer’s block nor…
