Frustration

I'm working on the Stevens piece again, polishing it while waiting to get another round of edits and hopefully hear from a few new sources of information. Managed to find a whole cache of photos. Hope to hear back about those in a couple of days.

Man, it's rough.

It fires me up. It gets me excited. The writing. The acknowledgement of one of my literary idiols. Stevens got me into crime. When I feel like just saying fuck it or writing the easy shit, the mindless dark shit that's just about something awful happening because awful is hip and edgy and easy and it seems like that's what people want to read, Stevens reminds me of my purpose as a writer.

I owe him.

He should not be forgotten that's what I want fom this. I want people to remember him. I want people to discover him for the first time. I want some writers out there to read him and think, "Oh, shit, that's what I'm supposed to be doing with crime fiction."

But it's frustrating.

So many dead ends. So many cold trails. So many edits and refinements. It's taken over my life and my writing in ways I didn't imagine. And the whole thing is still at novella length--about 34k. That's a tough placement, too many words for a magazine, too little for your average book. I have some ideas though and if everything comes through, lengthening shouldn't be a problem.

But it's still frustrating; especially when my life is frustrating enough right now with my wife's health, with the day job, with my own writing.