I need to remember more often during the writing process to check in with that first, truest book about writing, Edward Gorey’s The Unstrung Harp.
“Even more harrowing than the first chapters of a novel are the last, for Mr. Earbrass anyway. The characters have one and all become thoroughly tiresome, as though he had been trapped at the same party with them since the day before; neglected sections of the plot loom on every hand, waiting to be disposed of; his verbs seem to have withered away and his adjectives to be proliferating past control. Furthermore, at this stage he inevitably gets insomnia. Even rereading The Truffle Plantation (his first novel) does not induce sleep. In the blue horror of dawn the vines in the carpet appear likely to begin twining up his ankles.”
Yup. That’d be this week.
Whatever part of the writing process I’m in, there’s almost always a section of The Unstrung Harp that understands it better than I do. 🙂