I spent over two months bringing many of the story/chapters of The Empty House up to their next level of development, revision, and completion. Then, a few weeks ago, I decided that it was time to take another break, in order to refresh my objectivity. I left the file open on one of the twelve desktops on my computer. Every morning I click through them to see if anything needs to be done right away, and to remind myself of non-writing projects in hand. Which meant that every morning I saw the open file for The Empty House, where I had left off. 

On the fourth morning of my break — not the fifteenth as I had intended — I saw very clearly what needed to be done with that particular chapter. I did it and, without thinking about it, I spent the next three hours bringing two more chapters up to their next level. I should have put The Empty House aside then, but, since I had already gone back to working on it, I thought I might as well finish that pass, and then take a break, and to really do it this time, for at least three weeks. 

But I was tired, so, instead a full pass, I thought I would just read aloud those chapters which I had marked ‘read aloud’, just to get them out of the way, and to finish out the week. It shouldn’t take much more time than that.

‘Read aloud’ means to just literally read the chapter aloud to myself, so that I can hear and not just see what I’ve written. The purpose is to find typos, misspellings, punctuation errors, bad word choices, other simple things that require no creativity, and frequently need little thought. This kind of read-through is not a directed polish. Only after that ‘read aloud’ through the whole book would it be ready for polishing. 

And for continuity checks. 

So I read the ‘read aloud’ chapters. Some of them needed more work than I had anticipated. The later chapters were too familiar, since I had worked on them a only a few days before, and that made it difficult for me to be objective about them, but I finished reading them anyway. And now it really was time for me to back off, and to take a longer break before working on the twenty eight chapters which still need to be made ready for polishing. 

And for continuity checks.

Isaac Asimov complained about how hard it was for him to write more Foundation and Empire stories, because he had to make sure that nothing in the new story was in conflict with what he had written before, and which was already published. In other words, he had to ensure continuity. I now know what he was talking about. Because of the complexity of interwoven plots and the number of characters in The Empty House, I will have to do extensive continuity checks, through all sixty seven chapters. That will be another long pass before I can polish. And after that will be formatting for publication. 

I will never write anything as complex as The Empty House again. 

It doesn’t help that I’m getting slower now, and that I run out of energy sooner, and that I frequently have things to do which have higher priority than writing. Things like that sometimes make it difficult for me to get to work every day. The most important thing this time was dealing with a death in the family. 

I used to joke about getting done by Christmas. That was last year. It’s not a joke any more. I hope to be done by this Christmas. I may, after that, be able to work on other stories I want to tell. They run through my head, with beginnings, endings, and whatever is needed in between, every time a little differently. 

But I have to make myself take the longish break which I had cut short before I go back to The Empty House again. I need to become objective again. And I’ll have to be more disciplined about this break than I was the last time I tried to refresh myself. It takes discipline to make yourself get to work every day, but it also takes discipline to make yourself stop when you should. At least, that’s the way it is with me. 

And besides, I need to do my taxes.