Word After Word

As I push to the end of the book, I’m throwing away so much. I’m on p 300. I’ve got 350 sketched out.

I feel like I’m steering a ship into a harbor. And I of course have never steered a ship before. So it’s stressful. I can tell the water is getting shallow and the risk is I will run aground before I get the whole deal where it’s supposed to be.

So, I’m throwing everything that’s not nailed down overboard. Barrels of ideas, barrels of beautiful paragraphs, barrels of plans, barrels of lists, barrels of monkeys, buckets of notes, dead things, live things; I’m throwing so much over. It’s scary and liberating and funny and the seas are littered with flotsam-that-was-going-to-be-in-the-book. I’m shocked by what I see out there. Fabulous climactic insightful moments I’ve been steering towards all book long—gone. Completely gone.

I’m thinking pretty soon it’s going to switch, or it has already. Instead of not wanting to throw away, hating what I’m losing, I’m going to be thrilled with the new lightness of the book-as-ship and I am going to look for more to throw. There’s going to be a hunger and delight in throwing things overboard. And this will be good up to a point, and then not good.

I just want to land safely, without hurting anyone on shore, without scraping the belly of the book on shoals. I want to land elegantly, and pop out of my captain house, dance down the gangway, click my heels, and kiss the land.

While I’m finishing, I can’t afford to look backwards too long or off the to the sides, or below. I can’t stare at the barrels bobbing around my ship, clanging and waggling. I have to keep my eyes on where I’m headed.

Careful soundings now: Page 301, page 302. page 303. 304. 305. 306 . . . 

I think there’s always a little surge, just before you hit, land. An acceleration—risky, thrilling, lovely, a kind of loss of control when you know you’re dead-on.