Batten Down the Hatches: Preparing to Finish a Novel

May through September, excepting public appearances and prior nonfiction commitments, are reserved for finishing Finch, my new Ambergris novel. I've archived my email, deleted all of my links to blogs other than news blogs, and stopped taking on new commitments. I've instituted a strict exercise regime for two hours five-days-a-week of weightlifting and cardio with two days off, and am working on controlling my diet by limiting intake of any bad carbs. All weekday mornings will be spent on the novel. Afternoons will see limited internet connectivity for business communications, but most often be for typing up rough draft material or working on anthology commitments. Evenings will be for reading and relaxing and some blogging--replenishing the mind for the next morning's work. Weekends will be the main time I do nonfiction as it's less taxing.In some ways, pre-internet, it was a lot easier to get the requisite space and totality of attention necessary to really concentrate on a novel. Novel writing for me is like some kind of three-dimensional chess in terms of how you break down and build up the connections in the novel. How what's around you plays into the writing of a novel. A novel tends to suck up every real-world happening, which then comes out in the writing. (Another way in which novel-writing is different now: it's important for me to be "transparent" to readers of this blog, but on the other hand, I rarely share personal misfortune or personal emotion because this would rob my fiction of the compost it needs to come alive.) Being on the computer 24-7 is a horrible thing for me during novel-writing--it fragments the brain, sets the mind to racing, provides a supersaturation of information that's purely visual. A novel needs as inspiration spurs to the imagination from all the senses.I will definitely still be blogging here, but with less of the frenetic frequency you've seen recently--some of the posts here are the kind of heat-lightning I give off when I'm not working on a large fiction project, the focus of ideas tending to be short bursts suitable for blogging as the fragmentation of playing the game we call "Internet" takes its toll. (There will also be some interesting guest bloggers from time to time.)Mind you, I'm not dissing the internet (for example, it looks like the kosher imaginary animals post has gotten us a book deal). But like any technology, it can be both enriching and a confusing time sink--often at the same time. My main focus now is to put the novel front-and-center, and that means making the internet recede into the background. I won't be posting novel excerpts for this reason, as well. Even a positive response leeches the strength from the novel by, in one sense, telling the story publicly to an audience, making it old before it's even fully-formed. (Story excerpts are different because I generally have most or all of a rough draft before I post them; thus, the creative process isn't hindered.)Some have said all writers should consider fiction-writing "entertainment." In the writing of a novel, I always think of the act as more like a religion or a calling. That is to say, in the creation of fiction, I find something that is personally spiritual, something that takes me outside of myself.This is not to claim anything unspeakably pretentious for the form, but it has, like any art--yes, it is a form of art, like a sculpture or a painting--massive amounts of potential in certain unique things it can do. Whatever the actual results, perfection being unattainable and perhaps undesirable, I want my novels to have every chance to be, yes, entertaining, but also immersive, specific and resonant in their details, emotional (in the positive sense of the word), character-driven, and to get as close to their full potential (whatever that is for a particular project) as possible. In part, it is because achieving something different, whether it's a renovation or an innovation, and doing something well that's difficult is its own reward.I also quite frankly just love the physical act of writing. Focusing all of my attention on one thing and getting lost in it, frustrated with it, elated with it, arguing with it, hating it, loving it, seeing the true shape of it--that's bliss.