Finished The Dead Spend No Gold!

Finished The Dead Spend No Gold:  Bigfoot and the California Gold Rush.

At least, the first draft.  Finished on schedule, yesterday.

It was pretty exciting.  I get a euphoria when I finish a book.

I especially liked the last chapter of this book, which came out really, really well.  Really brought the book together.

I must say, this is pretty amazing.  The book came easy.  I had all the elements and characters I wanted before I started, I realized pretty early on that I wanted it to be a Lost Patrol story, I added in the werewolves early so that there would be some "bad guy" action.  I have a chance to try to reach some depth by the tragedy of the genocide of the Indians and the environmental disaster of gold mining -- and how it affects the natural world, which in this case is represented by Grendel.

Oh, and the Grendel thing.  I really need to find a Beowulf translation that I can use.  A short quote at the beginning of each chapter.  I mean, if there is a 19th century translation, how can that not be in the public domain?

But I have to be sure.  I don't want a book removed from circulation.  So I have to be certain.

Anyway, now I want to make sure the book is good.  I'm kind of excited by the potential, actually.  Much like about 2/3rds of the way through Led to the Slaughter I realized there was some resonant depth in the story itself, I'm hoping to find that kind of depth in this story too.

My biggest problem is forcing myself to really put in the rewriting work.  Not to settle for "good enough."
I'm lazy.

Lazy?  I write books every other day, how can I be lazy?

Because I do the easy stuff.  I do a lot of the easy stuff.

But the payoff to doing the proper rewriting is that the increased quality will exist forever -- that no matter how painful it is now, it will be something I can look back on with pride.

So there it is.  I hate to treat it like work.  To think of it as work.  But I can't fool myself into thinking it is anything else.

I just have to do it.