Wanted: Encouragement

Debbie Downer

Lately, I've been down, and not a little stressed about my progress on The Soul of Atlas. My dad, whose own book will be published in September, laid out a time line for me this afternoon on the phone. He basically said that I need to get this done by November and published in March. Well, at least published by March so that I can get in front of the hype of the movie. Atlas Shrugged, the movie is supposed to be in the theaters sometime in June of 2011, which is a beautiful thing. And, I am very excited. It's just that I wanted to have everything done by then: written, edited, laid out, published, and distributed. And all that, before the movie premiers. Well, let's not be a Debbie Downer. Let's get moving.

What do I need to do to move forward? What are the next steps? First, let's take stock. I have written 250 pages, and they have some semblance of coherence. More than that, I actually have a lot of good material. But, it's not a book yet. What is it? It's a collection of partially-completed chapters that don't quite hang together. I may be overstating that, but I'm feeling kind of overwhelmed about it all.
Please, someone tell me I'm not going totally crazy.