One discovery I made soon after deciding to become a writer was that everybody in Los Angeles has a script or novel “in the works” too. I needed to distinguish myself somehow. So in 2002, I set out to, you know, actually write a novel.
Every weekday for four months, I got up at 5:45, wrote for three hours, went to work for nine hours, then went to Starbucks and wrote until they kicked me out. Weekends I spent in the desk chair. Within a few weeks, I started to dream about places in my book. On days off, I would sometimes have this sensation like my main character was somewhere behind me, sitting there in companionable silence.
The most important moment of each night was the ritual of recording my time-spent and total words written on a spreadsheet. Once I put down 8300 words; other days I netted a hundred … or less. One bleak week, I could only find 300 words in five days. But finally, one night, I opened the spreadsheet and discovered that I was just 3000 words from my goal of 110,000. One more scene — already outlined — and the novel would be finished, done, complete. Gone forever.
The next morning, I got up and went to work without writing.
I never finished that book. Thirteen years later, I can still go back to many of the scenes in my head, waiting there silently like a loved one without a living will: not here, but also not gone.