The Annual Reckoning

This year I finished my novel, twice, once in February and once in November. That's pretty cool, but it's not unprecedented. In my long history of finishing THE EXTENT OF THE DAMAGE, there was another year I reached The End twice, way back in 2013.

I wrote last December about the repetitive nature of my year-end posts, but it's not every year I complete this novel even once, so 2019 was definitely a year of accomplishment. One consistent feature of my annual wrap-ups is the belief that the following year will bring a much more triumphant accomplishment, though I think I stopped stating this explicitly way back in 2011. So I'll just say that this time, I'm extra optimistic.

This particular end of the year is also the end of the decade, and everyone's been reflecting accordingly. I started this blog in 2010, so it's easy to check back on what I was up to at the beginning the decade. I was preparing to embark on a revision of this same novel. As much as the world has changed since then, I guess it's nice to find points of stability.

Here's to a new year, a new decade, and progress in positive new directions. I wish you all much happiness!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At The Millions, Adam O'Fallon Price decides to face the horror of rereading his first novel: "One thing that struck me on this reading is just how much there is going on. It's a common feature of the debut novel, in which an author takes decades of reading and thinking about novels and compresses it all into their first try, as though it will also be their last. Some of it works here, and some of it doesn't. If I were to give critical advice to the person who wrote this, I might tell him to think about losing at least one of the component parts--maybe the Vietnam sections--and to also not feel like he has to conclude all of the proceedings with quite such a bang."