Last night, I started to look at my draft and the revision(s) ahead of me. I so want this novel to be done. After throwing away two different versions and hundreds of pages, I want to just be able to be done with it.

But if I’m honest with myself, just like I knew those two previous versions were not working, I also know that this novel is not ready either. I have the structure of the story, and now I have find the heart of it. I can only do that through revision. And it will probably take more than one.

When I think of what I still have ahead of me, or I get bogged down in the writing/creation process, I think of Dennis Lehane, author of books like Mystic River and Gone, Baby, Gone.

He coined this phrase: Ticking-Clock Syndrome.

I first heard of this phrase when I read the foreward to the craft book, Your First Novel by his agent Ann Rittenberg and author Laura Whitcomb.

Lehane’s words was worth the money of the entire book for me. Here’s what he had to say about learning the craft:

“An unfortunate affliction that besets a lot of aspiring writers is one I’ve dubbed the Ticking-Clock Syndrome. You feel the time sweeping past (tick, tick, tick) and your loved ones are starting to wonder when you’re actually going to, you know, publish something (tick, tick, tick)…[]…So maybe, you think, you could take a shortcut or two, just shave a year off the process.

[]…But please remember the tortoise and the hare. This is a marathon, not a sprint. Please remember the part about wanting something vs. earning it. And please remember the ‘no one cares’ part, because if you show your work before it is ready, before it has the power to make someone fall in love, no one will care that you confused wanting it and earning it. They’ll just reject it. And on that day, you’ll say, ‘Darn. I wish I’d waited. What was I thinking?’”

He also applies Ticking-Clock Syndrome to published writers who are building careers. It’s really worth reading his entire foreward in the book.

The gems he gives are priceless.

So even though I know I still have a way to go with this WIP novel, I will not give in to Ticking-Clock Syndrome.