One Chapter at a Time

Recently, I was encouraging a friend who had lost momentum and confidence on a book length project. I suggested "fear of book" as the problem.

For years I limited myself to magazine articles and short stories, because the idea of a book length project overwhelmed me. I had ideas for books, I might even get the first couple of chapters on paper. Then the day would come when I'd allow free rein to "monkey mind", as New Mexico writer/writing coach Natalie Goldberg calls our internal critic. Next I'd open the bottom file cabinet drawer and drop that idea into the abyss. My internal critic told me that writing a book, fiction or non-fiction required myriad details and consistent writing through out...can you really do that, Martie? "Uh huh, I thought not!"

Then came the day when I signed on the dotted line...I would complete a book on contract. Not so easy to drop in the bottom drawer of the file cabinet. I had no choice but to face my fears. In doing that it occurred to me that if I could write a decent sentence, a decent paragraph, a decent article or short story, I could write a book. It is after all just a matter of stringing a group of sentences together. A book I told myself is written one sentence at a time, one paragraph at a time.

The book is better if those sentences, those paragraphs are consistently interesting and well written, but they aren't all going to be. Every few thousand words most of us write something boring, convoluted, redundant or maybe even ignorant. But, hey, what are editors for? I don't mind any more making an editor's day. In fact, I am pretty sure I can do that rather consistently and still get to the end of a book, one sentence, one paragraph, one chapter at a time.