Marc Rivers, Author

A progress update on the second draft of my novel: I’ve finished chapter 6. By my current chapter outline, I only have 19 more to go. Cue the upside-down smiley face emoji.

The second draft is already at 28k words, so there’s probably not a very good chance that the whole thing will come in under publishers’ preferred upper limit of 120k words. I’m not envisioning a publisher taking a flier on a first-time author with a novel over the standard word count limit. It makes me worried I’ll have to split this book into two, which is a sub-optimal outcome to me.

But before I can cross that bridge, I first need to get to it. To do that, I have to buckle down and find some resolve. And not just in the sense of making resolutions, though I’m thinking of that, too. Resolutions like:

• Making a blog post every other week rather than every month
• Finishing a chapter of my second draft every other week
• Being more open about my thoughts and feelings with the people in my life
• Being more committed to duties and responsibilities

All these things require resolve on my part—resoluteness, having resolve, being resolute. It’s easy for me to say that I’ll do these things, even that I want to do them, but as the saying goes, “Enthusiasm is common; endurance is rare.”

I have my own set of mental health issues. But outside of those (or, likely, exacerbated by them), I can be very defeatist at times. It makes it very difficult to establish new habits (good habits in particular) when any little setback is interpreted in my mind as complete and utter failure. It’s not a great way to live and I don’t recommend it. If anything, I recommend taking that part of your mind, giving it a name you absolutely cannot respect, and talking back to it with that name.

For me, I can’t really take a man named Terry seriously (Pratchett and Crews being notable exceptions). So the part of my mind that’s constantly bringing me down, is named Pterry. That’s right—he spells it with a silent P. Look me in the eye and tell me that you can take anything a person named “Pterry” says seriously. You can’t! So when the defeatist part of my mind is the part that’s being the loudest, I can just say, “No one asked you, Pterry!”

All of this is to say that my inner resolve, after so many, many years of letting Pterry do his thing without interruption, is Not Good™. And I’m in a place now where that has to change, not just if I want to accomplish goals as a writer, but if I want to continue enjoying the blessings I do have.

I believe it’s possible. And I will be damned if I don’t try with all I’ve got (and maybe more than I thought I had).

I’ll talk to you again soon and let you know how chapter 7 is coming along.

-Marc