So, a lot of people will, at some point in their lives, say “I should write a book,” and some of those will even follow through on it.
What’s insane is that, when you say that for the first time, you have no idea what you are committing to. You think that you’re signing up to get awards for your writing and being recognized as the writer of the great American novel, but in reality you’ve decided to torture yourself for the next several months or years chasing some impossible dream, reading it over and over and refining it until you know large sections of it verbatim. You will be happy when it’s done and you have something you’re proud of, but until then, you are going to be miserable for a lot of it.
In a lot of ways, writing books is kind of like parenting, from the way people talk about kids.
When you’re done and you look back, the most amazing thing, to me, is how much I really didn’t know what was going to happen next. Writing a big piece is kind of a leap of faith, you just have to believe that you’re going to figure it out.
I started on the sequel today! Night Terrors, first draft, has a thousand words, which isn’t much but it’s a start and the important thing is just to keep plugging away. But this time I know what I’m signing up for, which is making me question my sanity a bit. Who would voluntarily sign up for that a second time?
I guess that would be me. I don’t know how long it’s going to take, but I’m about to find out.
