It’s not zen at all to brag. It’s poor form. It’s borderline impolite. Self–centered and narcissistic. All of that, absolutely.
Okay, so here I go: I have just completed the first draft of my novel. It has taken me four years of planning and plot development and six months of intensive writing.

Portrait of the artist as a young man

What do I have to show for it? A 6MB file on a USB stick that is named Resilience. If I printed it off, its 101,000 words would fill about 400 pages, so I don’t. Typeset, the book would be around 300 pages long.
The story is set in Melbourne in 2009 and its protagonist is the world’s worst buddhist. Apart from that there are no autobiographical elements…
I felt mixed emotions after I completed this first draft last Wednesday. A sense of pride and achievement at having written a full-length novel. A tinge of sadness that an intensely creative process has come to a halt, or at least to a point where it needs to morph into something more rigorous.
And of course, I have only reached base camp. I will need to work and rework my text until I am convinced it’s the best I can do, then run it past others, sherpas who can help me reach the top…
But, right now, I am pretty chuffed. And yes, by the way, that is me in the picture…