It’s hard to describe the emotional punch packed by the simple act of writing “The End.”

It may be a stronger punch for writers of fiction than of nonfiction. When you’re writing nonfiction, there is at least a scheme—a plan, an outline—that you can follow to its inevitable conclusion at, well, you know, the end. 

As a fiction writer, you are somewhere between panic and desire, mired in a bog or lost in a fog, with little sense of how you’ll get to the end. You may not even recognize the end as you stumble past it. You could shoot right on by and write another twenty thousand words looking for a conclusion that is already embedded in the narrative. 

Some novelists breeze through first drafts with panache and confidence. I don’t know any of them, but I’ve heard of some. For me, the first draft is excruciating. Even when I know what I think the story is supposed to be, pulling it out of my strangely mixed conscious/unconscious brain is like the extraction of a whole mouthful of deeply impacted wisdom teeth. 

Once I have finished a first draft, I am liberated. No matter how bad it is, I can go to work and make it better. I love revision. 

All of which is my roundabout way of announcing—Ta-DA!!—I have just written “The End” on the first manuscript of my third novel, working title Hard Feelings. Don’t hold me to that title, Dear Reader. Titles are even harder to write than first drafts. 

But at last, I am delivered of this baby that has been years in its conception and now nearly three years gestating in the womb of my laptop. If it’s a little messy—and let’s face it, all babies are messy at birth—we can get to work cleaning it up. 

I’m shipping it off to the delightful Christine DeSmet for a first take on how much and what kind of work it needs. Her initial skim is like the APGAR score given to newborn babies—a quick check for signs of life. I hope there are some.

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What does all this mean to you, the reader? 

It means you may see—after a few months of author’s revisions and a few more months of publisher’s preparations—a wonderful book you can buy. It may or may not be called Hard Feelings.

It is a book about the soured relationship of two brothers growing up and coming of age in small-town America during the years before the Second World War. The two boy/men, Jag and Harold, have strikingly different journeys through life, and I hope you’ll find them interesting. 

What does it all mean to me, the author? 

It means I’m finally free to start work on my next project—as it happens, a nonfiction treatment of some fascinating bits of church history. I’m familiar with the turf, but additional research will be needed. And once I get that project off to a good start, I’ll circle back and do the fun part of the job on Hard Feelings—revising! As a certain rabbit of literary fame might say, “Don’t throw me in that briar patch, Br’er Fox!”

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You may have noticed that in all this palaver there is no hint that you will have a new book to read anytime soon. If this distresses you, and if you enjoy these weekly ruminations, feel free to order either or both of my previous novels, The Price of Passage and Izzy Strikes Gold!

You’ll find them a delight. 

Until next time, 

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer