The Last Third

It's been a month since I started my chapter book over again from scratch. Well, not entirely from scratch: I kept the characters and their traits and quirks. But they are now starring in an entirely new story. There isn't a scene - or a SENTENCE - that could be salvaged from the last draft. And now I have eight chapters done (of ten) and plan to write chapter 9 today. I could have a full first draft done by this weekend.

This made me remember a quote I read in the wonderful little book of meditations for writers, Walking on Alligators, by Susan Shaughnessy. Every page begins with a quote on the writing process or the writing life - or life itself - followed by Susan's ruminations about it. The quotes alone are worth the price of the book. Here is the one I just looked up to include in today's blog:

"The last third of the book only takes about 10 percent of the time. I don't know whether that's due to confidence or because the alternatives have been narrowed down." - Joseph Heller

I don't know, either, but I do know that it's true, at least for me, that as I write the last third of a book I have the same momentum that readers have as they read the last third of the book. As a reader would stay up all night to finish reading it, I want to stay up all night to finish writing it (except that I would never stay up all night! I'd want to, but the pen would fall out of my hand at 8:30. But still.) I feel the inexorability of what is going to unfold; the die of destiny has been cast for my characters; what is to be is what must be, given who they are, and everything they have said and done thus far. And yet there is endless fascination in seeing exactly how it is going to unfold.

And so my hand moves faster across the page. Faster! Faster!