"I am a reputation. I am a grainy photograph of a man with dark bullet holes instead of eyes."

Why is it so hard to complete things?

There's always that bump that staggers you-- I've found-- that slows your work down to a crawl. I've got so many plates spinning and getting to each and every one of them is starting to cause ultimate woe.

So yeah, got a load of short stories you'll never see being worked through, and that bastard novel, and of course, Zenith! dragging me down. But Zenith! is going to start moving forward soon enough, so we can but hope.

If I put more and more pressure on myself, yes, things'll be difficult for a while, but when I actually complete this stuff I'm pressuring myself with, then it'll be worth it, yes?

"Who am I? I am a reputation. I am a grainy photograph of a man with dark bullet holes instead of eyes. I am a severed penis stuffed into a dying mouth. I am a person you come to if you want someone dead. I am the person you know will find their target." - Emerald (Human Target Vol. 1 #1)

"The Chain" - Countdown

I started writing my novel in, I think, June of last year. I started strong, wrote like a sonofabitch, and then burnt out even faster. I stop/started, on-and-off, until this point, where I'm a few months away from it being 365 days of having it hanging over me, and knowing what I've got to do. I didn't write linear, that was a problem, so I've written a lot of the fun stuff, the stuff I wanted to write since I had the idea, and now I've got a lot of filler to write-- the thick stuff that needs doing but is always a drag to do. Exposition. Fighting. Dialogue I can handle, dialogue I love, but right now... I need to finish this thing. A year should be plenty of time, shouldn't it?

But not only that, but my novel has to be just that, it has to be a novel. If the word count isn't up, then it's nothing but a glorified short story, or even worse-- a novella. Some pseudo-Italian term that means "you're not good enough to hit our special high word count". I need to get this done. I need to write harder than I have been. But I'm in the place right now where doing it would be artificial and stodgy, and who wants that?

I want to be in Venice. I want to be back in Venice, sitting in front of that cafe; my ears open, my eyes on the street and my fingers on the keyboard. I want to write, and I want to get it done.

So, June, right?

Wish me luck.