I can't make this hurt less...

"You don't know how hard it was for me to sign your death warrant." Grand Moff Tarkin - Star Wars.

Sometimes, no matter what you do, you just can't fix something. It's beyond your power. Beyond your intelligence. Beyond your love and support and nurturing. You can bang your head against the wall, worry and fret, scream at the moon, plead with God, but nothing changes the fact that as frustrating as it is, you can't do anything to fix the problem.

I have been struggling against the wind for months now, looking for any angle, any approach that might make this easier, but I think I've known in my heart that there is no way to reach my objective for now. My novel is broke and I don't know how to fix it.

Oh, I've come up with hundreds of ideas, each one sketchier than the last. But after each idea is embraced then slowly rejected, I lose a little stamina. The project seems more insurmountable than before - the task that much more daunting - and the solution that much more out of reach. And I've begun to lose faith in this novel, which has started me down the path of doubt, despair, and depression.

I write not to make a bazillion dollars (though that would be nice) nor to win friends and influence enemies, but because I need to write. Its a primal instinct, a form of therapy, and an urge that can't be excised in any other way. So to sit on the sidelines and wait for some earth shaking revelation to come along that will fix all my novels problems and propel me into writing superstardom is killing me by small degrees, like a man waiting for a bus while standing in a wading pool filled with pirhanna.

I have decided to move on. Not to abandon my novel to the trash heap, but to let it simmer for a while so that I might come back at it someday and take it up again. I think this is the healthiest alternative for me.

In truth, my first objective was to write a novel. I have accomplished that. And I have learned so much in the ordeal that I now consider myself a real writer. Freeing up my creative juices again to go after some different game is probably a good thing. But I will leave part of me behind with the novel, and I will never be complete until it is. It hurts even more to have come so close - like a certain ex-Giant who was within four outs of a World Series ring. I was so close that I could taste it, and that is perhaps why I let it drag out for so long. But six years of my life is too much time to devote to one novel, especially when there is no end in sight.

Unlike some people, I do have an exit strategy.

And now... sigh... for something completely different...