Bill Kerwin's Blog: Big Sleep City News, page 3

It's revision week in Big Sleep City, and I am reminded again that it is revision that brings the cruelest, deepest, most revolutionary acts of creativity.

People are always saying, "Go for the gold." Not me. I have my own motto: "Go for the silver!"

Yesterday I finished the rough draft of Big Sleep Blues, Chapter 6. 25% of my first walk through this new world is now complete.

Time to climb to the top of the hill. I wonder what valleys and rivers I can get a glimpse of, visible now through the slowly dissipating mist?

I love working on the first draft of my novel every morning. It's as if I'm out on a walking tour of an undiscovered territory. I've got a map, sure, but maps don't tell you everything.

One small reason I'm glad I'm married is because I never was good at dating, Dating terrifies me, especially internet dating. It's putting your soul up there, every day, for strangers to evaluate.

Now I've written a book and I'm trying to sell it on Amazon. Same thing.

"Nothing corrupts a man so deeply as writing a book; the myriad temptations are overwhelming.” --Nero Wolfe, in Rex Stout's The Mother Hunt (1963)

As I write a little more of my second novel Big Sleep Blues each morning, I choose a slightly different course for my hero Archer Blackwood. And thus I turn my back (and Archer's) on all the other things he might do and come to be.

Sounds harsh, and---yes!--corrupting. Yet each one of us must do this to himself or herself, each and every day of our lives.

Now I know what it's like to be a real writer. I'm too busy checking my royalties to get any writing done in the afternoon. If it continues like this, I may have to stop reading too.