Writing isn't happening right now. I was making good progress with my mystery novel, but I can't bring myself to get back into it. I was writing it for him. My main character is named after him. When I first started this book, I talked to Dad about it over the phone, and he said it sounded interesting. In later conversations about stories I was working on, he'd come back to the mystery and say I should write that one because it sounded like a good story.
Why haven't I finished it? I guess I wanted it to be perfect. I wasn't going to share any of the first draft with my dad because he was the one who got me into reading mysteries. It had to be good for him. It had to be awesome. Now he won't get to read it.
I will finish the book. It will be dedicated to him, but I'll never know if he would have liked it. There's no other standard to which I can compare the story that will matter as much to me as his opinion. Some things even authors don't get to know.