This ain't no hobby. This ain't no disco. It's sloppy and hard work.

Writing Nearly Human has not been a tidy process.

Writing a book isn't efficient.  I look around my room and see papers scattered about, unfinished notes, newspapers, pencils and pens, cups and plates, blankets -- it all feels so slovenly.

Add to that how sitting around and thinking and laying down and internet browsing and playing solitaire and sometimes or mostly just staring into the screen -- with a few moments of writing -- make up most days.

Or, conversely, how I'll dive into a writing session and emerge six hours later unaware of how the time has passed.

It feels like I have made every mistake I'm prone to make with Nearly Human.

If nothing else -- and this sounds lame -- it has been a learning experience.  I've had to rediscover my strengths and weaknesses, and even more importantly, my working process.   I can say, too, that it has been a reaffirmation of my desire to write.

Because -- and this sounds lame, too -- I've worked really long and hard on this book.  This ain't no hobby if the amount of time and effort is taken into consideration.

This last round of rewriting has been interesting.  The editor I hired has been very helpful -- first as an affirmation that I was indeed making progress from the early drafts and actually had something worthwhile-- but also because it has spurred me into make yet another effort.  (I won't say final, because that's what I think every time and so far every time I've been wrong.)

She forced me to look at perhaps cutting the book, and so I set out over the last weekend to try to cut out the fat.  I managed to cut 17K words!  Which was both scary and exhilarating.  I'd rewritten this book so many times, added so many layers, that there was quite a bit of duplication.  But more importantly, many of the cute ideas and explanations and conversations and even some scenes I'd come up with, didn't propel the plot.  So I tried my best to cut or trim or consolidate those.

So the book should read much faster and smoother -- whether faster and smoother enough, I can't tell.

The book certainly reads differently.  The early version were 'interesting things,' one after another, with a sort of plot with hazy motivations.

This last draft is mostly about plot and story -- which is what a book should be, I think.

From what I learned from writing Nearly Human -- Freedy Filkins and Death of an Immortal and The Reluctant Wizard all came much easier, without so many of the missteps.  The working "process" may sound less important than the creative process, but all I'm really saying is that the working process makes it possible to do the creative process.  Otherwise, I'm floundering around.

I was inspired to go back and rewrite Sometimes a Dragon, which I always wanted to do but was afraid to tackle.

I'm making big decisions on direction and I'm willing to cut or change huge parts of the books -- which is necessary for me if I'm going to ever make these books better.

I don't know if there will ever be a payoff -- but I know that I've worked hard for it.  I've really put the effort into this for the last two years, and the last six months especially.

Though sometimes I feel like I'm just beginning.