Does Art really imitate Nature?

I’m a big fan of Lionel Richie. When I heard he was starting his summer tour in a town near where I live, I “packed up the babies and grabbed the old ladies” and went to see him.

It was a great concert. Lionel was singing all his old hits, and everyone in the packed house, especially yours truly, was singing right along with him. It was the ultimate no-fault Karaoke. “You’re Once… Twice… Three times a Laaaay- deee” and it’s “Easy Like Sunday Morning.” I was in full throat. Going strong. Feelin’ the love.

But when he got to one of his best songs ever, Endless Love, something happened to me. Remember the words?

… there’s only you in my life …
… you’re every breath that I take,
… you’re every step I make
… you will always be

My Endless Love.

It’s a song I should be singing to my Honey standing right beside me. But no … I start thinking about my current endless love, the damn novel I’m writing… my companion who’s been the “every breath that I take; every step that I make …” for the past year. For me, Lionel’s “Endless Love” has taken on a whole new meaning.

On the way home after the concert, I asked myself how writers cannot help but fall into the “endless love” syndrome with whatever they are working on. I know for me, finishing my second novel was becoming “endless”. It was consuming my life.

I don’t know about you, but my experience has been that I write a great eight pages on, say, a Monday. I’m so thankful. My Muse has been kind to me. I’m thinking, let’s rock and roll and get this damn work finished. But then Tuesday rolls around. Either my Muse has left me, or she has decided her output the day before was crap; so I spend that day rewriting everything I did the day before. Tell you what … have enough of those days and you add a whole new meaning to the phrase “endless love.”

Okay, so I’m a newbie at the craft of writing, but I’m learning. I’m learning that while re-writing is a critical task, there comes a time when you have to say, “enough is enough.” There comes a time when re-writing can become counterproductive.

My take-away from the concert that night was that, indeed, art does imitate nature. But what I needed to understand was the notion of Endless Love, at least in reference to writing a novel, was not “endless”. For art and nature, “endless” meant lasting no more than a year …max.

Click here to read the first chapter of my new novel One Death Too Far. Haven’t got a publishing date yet, but as soon as I do, you’ll be the first to know.

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