The summer after I turned eighteen, I won some money (a pretty nice amount for a fresh-out-of-high-school kid who wanted some spending money and to avoid getting a job for as long as possible. I did the responsible thing and spent a lot of it buying the seasons of Oz that were available on DVD at the time) for an initial character sketch I did of the lead in a novel I started writing on my fifteenth birthday. That was a good thing; I had told myself and told myself and told myself that if something hadn’t happened by then I would give that story up.

I didn’t give it up, exactly.

Last year I made it to an acceptably excessive number of words, and I hated almost every paragraph. I love the end and I love the beginning, but the middle is flat and terrible and it is killing me. I think the time has come to let go.

I’ve started rewriting characters (and really, I like almost all of them, but some of them have needed personality transplants since their first line of dialogue) and rethinking storylines, and hopefully it’s only a matter of time before I’ve got something good to show for all the years I’ve spent buried under a pile of notebooks.

(Yes, I really do handwrite everything. Probably not the best tactic, but I can’t think well in front of a computer screen. Since you’re reading this, I doubt you’re surprised by that fact.)

The truth of the matter is that I’m impatient. It’s taken this long and I am beginning to feel like it will take just as long to re-write. Lately I’ve noticed that the thought that I have all of the time in the world has creeped its way into my head; despite that, though, if I’m not heard from for awhile, it’s because I’m off somewhere playing mad scientist – tweaking ways of thinking and creating life.

Who could ask for greater power?