Twenty-two years ago, I started writing a book called Paul’s Penance.
Somewhere along the way, it became Reset Button. Then it became Paul’s Penance again. I have the folders to prove it: Draft 1, Rev 1, Rev 2, Rough Draft 1.0, Reset Button 4.0, Reset Button 5.0, and finally, just “Working,” like the file itself got tired of pretending it knew what it was called. Two titles trading places for over two decades, each one feeling like the right name at the time.
I used to think that was the story: a guy who couldn’t make up his mind, circling the same manuscript for twenty-two years because something in it wasn’t working yet.
I don’t think that’s the story anymore.
Here’s what actually happened. I had to finish Alignment Before Outcome first. I had to get through cancer. I had to keep showing up for morning pages, day after day, long before I understood what any of that daily, unglamorous practice was actually for. None of those things were Paul’s Penance. All of them were, apparently, prerequisites for it.
I don’t think I could have finished this book without finishing those other things first. Not because they taught me craft, though they did some of that, but because Paul’s Penance is a book about a man who’s given thirty days to face what he owes, and to whom. I couldn’t write my way to the end of that question from the outside. I had to actually go live some version of it. Cancer has a way of asking you what you owe and to whom in a tone that doesn’t accept a deflection. Morning pages have a way of making you sit with an unfinished thought until it finishes itself, whether you wanted it to or not.
So the book waited. It changed its name twice while it waited. And it turns out that was never wasted time. It was the book refusing to be finished by a version of me that wasn’t ready to finish it honestly yet.
I’m back to calling it Paul’s Penance now, and I don’t think that title is going to move again. I’m deep in revision, chapter by chapter, catching the places where the story still contradicts itself. And a few of those contradictions, it turns out, are the interesting ones. I’m finishing it at the pace it needs, not the pace a calendar wants.
Twenty-two years is a long time to spend on one book. I used to be a little embarrassed by that number. I’m not anymore. It took exactly as long as it took to become someone who could actually finish it. I don’t think that’s a flaw in the process. I think that’s just what a book this personal costs.
More updates soon. There’s a bigger one coming next week.
If this resonated, pull up a chair. I send one letter a month with new writing and honest updates on my novel, Paul’s Penance. Sign up at danhansen.com.
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