Hi, my name is Sheri and I’m a serial unfinisher.
I’ve lost track of how many years—yes, years—I’ve been working on RESURRECTION, a work of historical fiction/alt history set in 16th century Scotland.
While the heart of the story has remained the same—a-500-year-old historical murder at the royal court—the framing story has plagued me and has changed in major ways at least four times. I must have written well over 300K words on this 100K word book.
And still IT IS NOT FINISHED!
I like to think of these years as an apprenticeship. The story is very ambitious in its scope and when I first started working on it, I simply didn’t have the skills I needed to do it justice. As my craft has improved, so have the drafts. I’ve also never stopped researching, and have even travelled to Scotland for boots on the ground research.
But still IT IS NOT FINISHED!
I’ve abandoned RESURRECTION several times to work on other projects (also unfinished) or to focus on my day job in corporate communications (for which I regularly finish things), but I keep coming back to this “book of my heart.” I love so much about it—the time period, the central mystery, the setting in the ancient Ettrick Forest, the characters…
But there are also days when I am sick to death of it.
So, it’s do or die time. I’m challenging myself to get to The End by December 31. That’s 91 days from now. Stephen King thinks you can finish a complete draft of anything in three months…and rumor has it he knows a thing or two about writing.
If I win, well the prize is probably more editing. LOL. But at least I’ll have a beginning, middle AND end to work with and not just a pile of scenes. And if I fail…it’s time to leave this one in the bottom drawer and move on to some of the other stories in my files waiting for their happy ever after.
Either way, 2020 is about crossing finish lines.
Have you got a problem project that’s been plaguing you? Join in my #FinishYourBook #90DayChallenge. I’ll be whining talking about my progress on Twitter.