It’s always easy to meet a goal in the beginning, and today is no exception. Distracted by this blog itself (messing around with styles, fonts, and plugins can really make the hours fly), I still managed to turn up the Gogol Bordello and crank out the day’s quota (with some to grow on).

This is only the fourth time in my life that I’ve passed the 100-page mark (single-spaced pages, baby–the way the crazies write). Right this moment, I guess I’m feeling like the book is flawed, clumsy, a bit of a pile of shit, really, but how else am I going to learn? Besides, this book is my freaking albatross; if I don’t put it down soon, it is going to be the end of me.

I sometimes think about what it would be like to finish it again. It’s such a sweet thought.

The Goal: Try to get my novel done by October 2010. This thing has been vexing me, on my mind, and yet elusive since 1995. I’ve written it twice as a novel, twice as a screenplay, and I’m still not satisfied.

This will be the last time.

I have a goal of 500 words a day. Seems easy enough … except why then is my average right now only slightly above 200 words?

There have been a lot of lapses. A lot of days where the thoughts weren’t coming or the story wasn’t easy to find. I’m trying to tell myself that quality doesn’t matter, not now, not yet. Forward progress is the goal.

One of my characters in particular is a permanent headache. He’s a cop who is supposed to be smart and likable, but he’s witnessed some things recently that have broken his mind a little. I think he’s coming across as a downright lunatic, and I’m feeling this urge like the undertow on a beach to go back and completely rewrite his character.

But I know that road. I’ve been down it before. And it only leads to another unfinished version of this horrible book. So I won’t do it. I’ll keep going with this bizarre mess of a guy in my book, and maybe today he’ll start coming into better focus for me.

I can dream anyway.