The Creative Act of Faith

I subscribe to a blog called Magical Words which is about writing and written by a number of very good authors. The piece that I received in my box today was by David B. Coe and called "Ideas and the Creative Act of Faith". In his blog post, he details where he is now on the creation of a new idea, which is not very far in the planning stages. He also discusses how every act of creation is an act of faith.

We start our projects believing that when our work is done, the finished product will be complete and coherent, a reasonable representation of the vision that drove us to begin in the first place. But of course, we have no guarantee of this. We have only our confidence in our own creative process.

I am at a completely different place in the creative process. Instead of at a fresh beginning, I am deep along the path of a story and wondering if I will have the strength to make it through to the end. Don't get me wrong, "Dark King Rising" is progressing along quite well and has exceeded the word count I initially planned for it by some margin. However, I wonder if, in the end, it will be a complete and coherent narrative. I think we have this moment of doubt with every manuscript. At least I do, I can't speak for everyone else. By the same token, I believe in the story I'm telling and its ability to captivate. As no one else has really read it, that is a leap of faith as well.

Tonight I'm working on plotting out the final few chapters of "Dark King Rising" so that over the next few days I can make a great stab at finishing the manuscript. I gave myself six weeks to get it into shape. I'm in week five. I have a week and a half left to finish it. Can I do it? I don't know. I'm hoping. It depends on how badly I get mired in the ending chapters. Hence the need to plot them out more fully than I have already and make sure the ending is going to make sense after everything the characters have gone through. When it's all said and done, I hope to have enjoyed this book to its fullest before turning around and editing it a couple passes. Then and only then will it be good enough to be read by others.