Climb Every Mountain

"Climb every mountain,
Ford every stream.
Follow every rainbow,
Til you find your dream."

The song "Climb Every Mountain", music by Richard Rodgers and Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II from their epic musical production, "The Sound of Music", is one of the greatest tributes to striving for one's dreams that has ever been written. As a child I listened to the character sing that song from the film, day after day. As a vocal student that song was in my repertoire for building my voice.

Now, as a writer, recalling the wonderful lyrics and the soaring emotion of the song I embrace the sentiment, yet again.

2009 was a year when achieving my dream seemed all but impossible. Work and familial responsibilities, as well as the additional ones that I had only myself to blame for, including the many volunteer jobs I'd taken on for the entire year, had proven not only time-consuming, but energy draining and emotionally frustrating. Every time I turned around, hoping to have carved out some time and energy for my own writing efforts, I was thwarted by some new snag, snafu or deadline. No matter how hard I tried, I ended up sucked dry of any creative juices. I greatly feared that all of the challenges I had set myself at the beginning of the year were going to be universally unmet. I was writing less than the year before rather than more. I felt as though I had fewer ideas, and even less structure.

In October, however, my Mother told me that what she wanted for Christmas was a complete novel (her motive was blatant - to get me to for-heaven's sake FINISH SOMETHING). Throughout the year whenever I'd mentioned someone else, she'd respond with something along the lines of "but they finished their book" or "if you'd stop spending so much time volunteering, maybe you'd get something written". For this project she'd even given it some additional thought as to how I might be successful. She suggested I write about "something you know" - and set the plot in an entertainment law firm in NYC. Because I work in one. But it wasn't a concept that intrigued me and in the end I couldn't muster up the enthusiasm. Never at a loss for plots, I was utterly barren. So, I tried a second idea, one that had been rolling around in my unfulfilled brain for a while - a contemporary romance along the lines of a Blaze novel. Again, after 50 pages, I just couldn't ignite the spark.

I was pondering the potential of failure after a month of fits and starts. I got a nasty cold in late October, serious enough to miss a few days of work. Then I was barely recovered when I came down with a second respiratory infection. Again I was exhausted, drained and out of work for a couple of days. Little if any writing got done. In fact, I didn't even have the wherewithall to THINK about the project. Since I didn't even have an idea, yet, that meant things were looking grim.

Then on December 1, I had the brainstorm. One of my favorite projects - one I started 2 years ago, but after 2 well-received scenes (one was a finalist in an RWA contest), it had fallen by the wayside. See, my biggest problem has never been a lack of ideas, or an inability to get started. It's been my absolutely universal failure to keep GOING once I get a good idea. So I've got probably hundreds of beginnings and only one single so-so middle. And one sort-of ending!

But on 12/1, I decided the novel, then called DEAD MAN TALKING, would be IT. The one I liked, the plot I'd thought a great deal about, and a genre I'm particularly interested in (urban fantasy). (And because of my procrastination I was further frustrated to discover an urban fantasy in B&N the other day titled - you guessed it - DEAD MAN TALKING - so the new working title of my book is BLACK MAGIC WOMAN.)

So the writing began on the morning of 12/2. The night before I'd dug up my past segments, all my notes, and I tore into the project on December 2nd at 6:00 AM, feeling thrilled, motivated and determined. The writing kept going along fine. I'd done about 50 more pages between 12/2 and 12/10. Not nearly enough, but I was on a roll.

Then I got sick again. Once more I was out of work and in incredible pain from a sinus infection. Four days of nothing but sleep and barely a single word put on the page. A visit to the Doctor, antibiotics, and a slew of other remedies and again I was clawing my way back to health. I was convinced I'd still be able to make my goal once I started healing.

Then I was called on the carpet at work totally out of the blue. Without going into the distressing details, suffice it to say that I was devastated. I didn't lose my job, but I was humiliated and demoralized by what I had to admit was some legitimate criticism.

I went into an incredible funk that lasted a week. I tried to toil away and managed to get a few pages written, but I was still under 100 pages. But things have a way of going on, and so did I.

Meanwhile, I was still trying to wrap up an RWA chapter contest responsibility and a second RWA chapter Board election. But even in my dreams, I followed my heroine, giving her great new friends and comrades in arms, as well as terrific new battles and challenges.

Then a week after the work upheaval came a 2nd one. This one ended up putting me square in the middle of a huge amount of unforeseen work at a time when I had thought I'd have a far easier go of it. Instead of being able to use my lunch hours to write, and to leave on time and dedicate entire evenings to my growing novel, for the entire week before Christmas I worked through every lunch and worked until 7:00, which after my commute, got me home at 9:00, drained and almost unable to think, much less write.

And it was, of course, Christmas. Shopping, cleaning, decorating and running the additional errands the holiday engendered, including finding a Christmas tree and presents for my brother, and making up a menu and buying the food in advance because I'd be getting home too late on Christmas Eve.

And then we had 2 feet of snow. I was shoveling for days and dragging my debilitated ass to work every day in frigid weather that made me even more depressed.

I'd stopped reading emails. I'd abandoned my own Yahoo group. I was skipping meals, avoiding the newspapers and the news and I wasn't reading any books or magazines or watching even the minimal TV I usually did. But I was writing. Doggedly writing. As my Mother often says, "bloody but unbowed", I continued putting down the words.

It seemed like the last 2 months of the year were all of the frustrations rolled up into one giant ball and multiplied and then condensed and repeated the last two weeks of the year.

But I kept on fighting the good fight. I kept writing. And lo and behold it began to get easier. I got past the anticipated half-way point. I forged ahead. Dialogue was flowing. Adversaries were gelling. And from 12/20 to 12/24, I wrote like a madwoman.

I didn't make it.

On December 24th I printed out the 200 pages I'd managed to complete and do a quick once-through edit for typos. I packaged it up and gave it to my Mother as half of her Christmas present. I swore to her I'd have it finished for New Year's.

It was a miserable sting when she mentioned to a visiting relative that I'd given her a book I'd written for Christmas. The relative expressed an annoying level of surprise, and Mom clarified that it was only half a book. The automatic response that clearly conveyed the expectation that, of course, that explained it. I'd never really finish an actual book! It was a miserable, bitter moment. But it also fueled an anger that acted as a prod to keep me going.

After the insane four days that was the Christmas holiday, despite having a three-day weekend, I barely had a minute to myself. Nevertheless, after everyone had gone to bed in the evenings, and in the mornings before they woke up, beginning on December 25th, I got back to my writing.

Once back at work, every night, every morning, lunch hours, my AM and PM train rides and bus commutes were one long writing jag. I was up one day at 5:30 when plot developments wouldn't let me sleep. I was zipping through, operating on a "pantster" mindset: not stopping to double-check consistencies or re-work scenes that seemed they might be out of order. Instead, I just kept plugging away.

Because by this point it was all about the finish line. I'd never finished a fully-complete novel in first draft form. I'd finished one that had huge gaps throughout the second half which honestly couldn't be considered a "complete" first draft. And it was both my Mother's disappointment as well as my own failure to meet the challenge - the one challenge of 2009 that I had had the highest hopes for all year long - that kept me slogging away.

The ache in my elbows got worse. The ache in my knees from awkwardly sitting with my laptop got worse. I wrote longhand, in pencil, on the train and bus and during lunches and I had to re-type that, as well. My hands got to the point where they kept cramping throughout the day.

I was determined. But I had a long way to go. One evening - December 27th, I think - when I had to rest my hands, I slathered my knees, elbows and back with Ben Gay and I took out an hour and a half to watch an American Masters special on Channel 13 about Louisa May Alcott. And it acted as a great inspiration. I learned of her monstrous output, rejection, loneliness, and how she managed it despite illness, family burdens and deaths, and doing work that she despised. After it was over, at 10:30 PM, I went back to my laptop keyboard.

The year was winding down. I was looking forward to the auspicious blue moon - the second full moon of December - on December 31st. New Year's Eve. It seemed a great portent. I was also eagerly anticipating the end of my many RWA responsibilities and the start of a new year in which I was going to dedicate myself 100% to my own writing. Unlike every other year in recent memory, I did not begin writing my lengthy list of goals and resolutions. Because every waking second was dedicated to meeting the challenge of finishing this book. My first book.

The last couple of days I got so frustrated I was on the verge of tears all the time. I started popping aspirin for the joint pain. I was carrying multiple print-outs of different sections back and forth to work and trying to remember where I'd left off when I didn't have them with me, which only added to the weight - and the pain from - my backpack and bag.

But I typed. And typed. And typed. I slept less several nights not going to bed until midnight. I woke earlier. I stopped doing any chores. My ensembles weren't matching very well. Of course, given my recent problems at work I still had to focus constantly on being responsive to every need and making sure that every task was completed - timely and perfectly. Huge word-processing jobs at the office added to the pain. Walking on ice and snow made my back hurt. And New Year's Eve loomed, meaning I had to rush home and gather up my brother and make our traditional New Year's Eve party.

I was still writing as fast as I could. But I was reaching the "black moment" and a climactic battle of good versus evil and I hadn't the foggiest idea how I wanted it to play out. I played hookey for another few hours to go out on Tuesday, December 29th, to have dinner with my friend Lis (who, yes, HAS a finished - and soon to be published - novel). I was at 64,000 words but I was fast approaching a vegetative burn-out. Poised on the brink of the very last part of the book I had to take a momentary breather. And I was hungry.

We talked about inconsequential things. I had a couple too many beers. I wrote on the train on the way home, and after I got home until 12:30, but then woke up Wednesday morning late. With a headache. But I had also awakened with a way to end the book. I was running late, but the minute I got on the train I started writing (pencil and paper - using up 10 pencils, wearing them down to the nub). And I was zooming. Flying. For the first and only time I actually thought I might - MIGHT - just do it.

I kept writing during lunch and at the end of the day, when all of my bosses had left, I hit the keyboard. And I wrote until after 8:00 PM, despite exhaustion and knowing I wasn't going to get home until 10:00 PM at the rate I was going.

And at 8:03 I typed "The End". On page 348. After 72,493 words.

I was done. I had finished my very first complete novel.

I had not failed. Despite a final stretch that was almost inconceivably disasterous, on every single front, I had DONE IT!

I printed out pages 221 - 348. I proofed them on the train and in a hot bath (not easy to do) where I tried to soothe my back and knees. I made some corrections, tweaked a few things here and there and discovered I had 1 character with 2 different names.

On December 31, 2009, after my office closed at 2:00 PM, I printed out the second half of BLACK MAGIC WOMAN for my Mother (I'd put the first in a notebook with a cover sleeve and even created a "cover" for my book and title pages, so I did the same with the second half.)

Then I printed out a copy of the entire thing for me. My first complete novel. I lugged both home with me and after going to pick up my brother at his group home, stopping for champagne at the liquor store, and returning home and getting the party ready, I handed my Mother the second installment.

It was December 31st, 6:30 PM.

And today, January 1, 2010, it is sitting here beside me as I get started on the revisions.

Because now I have a new goal. And this time, I can do it. Now I know that I can - and will - climb that mountain. And find that dream.