Many people say writing a novel is hard. There are memes all over the internet about how arduous the process is. I’ve seen them. While they might have a bit of truth on the difficulty of writing, they have more truth about our perceptions of writing. I don’t know very many people whom look at an essay assignment and do cartwheels of joy. In all of my, ever-increasing, college years, I must have written 100 essays, ( I have more than 300 college credits. So, that isn’t much of an exaggeration), and it doesn’t really seem to get easier. Why is that?
          Of course, like some of the memes say, I’ve started a few more novels in the process of writing the first one. There is an excitement in beginning a new novel, whether writing it or reading it. It’s just like a new relationship: the ideas are fresh, and you revel at the possibilities; you lose sleep thinking about how everything will unfold. Yet, the more details that go into this new relationship, the more it feels like work. Every relationship is work.
          So, why doesn’t writing essays and novels seem like it’ll get easier. Well, many of us are goal-oriented. I know I am. I’d like to be able to tell people that I’ve run all 26 miles of the Boston Marathon, but I don’t really want to go through all of that preparation, training, and pain. The last paper I turned in for one of my Psych courses, I turned in late. I dreaded it the whole time. The instructor graded it and I got a perfect score, minus the late penalty. So, what would have happened if I had just done the paper?
          There’s the rub. Those memes mention how difficult writing is, but the big killer is our procrastination of it. We psych ourselves out. Just like when your mom told you to clean your room and you spent the entire day moping and whining about how you didn’t want to do it.
          “If you just did it, you’d be done by now,” mom would say.
          Don’t tell her I said this, but, she was… right. No one knows more about this phenomenon than me: I’ve been working on the same novel, off and on, for more than 10 years. If I had written just one page a day, even a page a week, I would be done with that albatross by now, and probably others, too. It’s rumored that Stephen Crane wrote “The Red Badge of Courage” in 7 days. Say, What! Christopher Paolini finished his first book, “Eragon”, when he was 18. (Insert lip-smacking here). So, really, what’s the excuse?
          In my experience, revision is much, much easier than the soul-rending, teeth-grinding act of creating a novel. Yet, the fact still remains: you can revise a half-written story into oblivion; if you don’t finish the initial draft, you have nothing.
          As someone said to me recently, “Just write the damn book!”