Here is the danger.
I am totally finished with everything.
No edits. No nothing.
At least I have had about a month and a half of not writing anything new. It is probably about time to start that next thing.
Yesterday, I sent off the final version of Winger to my editor at Simon and Schuster, and to my new agent, too.
Yes, I have a new agent. I will tell you about my agent some other time.
But I wanted to say that this last time working through Winger, I really fell in love with that book again. It's hard sometimes to get in and out of books when you write a lot of stuff, and when, as I said yesterday, nothing you write is anything like anything else you write.
One of the things that is cool about Winger is that the narrator draws stuff in the book, and he puts in notes and phone conversations (and he plays rugby, too). Anyway, I ran across this little self-portrait note from him toward the end of the book that I'd forgotten was in there, and I thought it was a cool cartoon.
I will not show you the cartoon, because I drew it, and there will be a different -- real -- artist doing the artwork for the book when it comes out in spring of 2013. But here's what the cartoonist/narrator has to say (don't worry, there is no spoiler -- not even a hint about anything that happens in the book):
You ever hear of Joseph Conrad? He said, "One writes only half the book: the other half is with the reader."
Mr. Wellins might say that I have made you a conscripted audience; that I didn't give you a choice as to whether or not to believe me, and, believe me, sometimes I can't believe myself.
Or something.
But I wrote this all down, and I tried to make everything happen the same exact way it did when I was seeing it and feeling it - real time - with all the confusion, the pressure, and the wonder, too; even though I did get off the page once in a while and make jabs at things. Which is kind of like the cartoonist drawing a cartoon of himself while he's drawing himself.
