Five years

We all have pet projects, the ones that we can't let go of, no matter how much we try. Mine started as a trial run for NaNo 2007, after I had a dream I had to get out or I was going to lose it. What followed was about 20,000 words in a handful of Moleskine cahiers over the course of the week of fall break. I've worked on it in bursts over the years, first as a continuous story, then as a discontinuous set of shorts that weave in and out of the original idea, and take it from a novel to an epic. What once spanned two years now covers fifteen.

Last night, I had a revelation. There is a key event that is the premise for most of the action in the story. Without it, the dream I had makes no sense. In the past, I'd just danced around what happened, the mechanics, but five years and three months after I wrote the first words, it finally came together. I know how out all happened, and it works. It's beautiful.