I can’t complain.
I recently signed a contract with a publisher for my new book and an agent is shopping another manuscript. My writing partner and I published a new children’s book of which we are proud and which won an award. Another publisher also released my YA paranormal novel a few months ago.
It has been a good writing year.
So after taking a few weeks off after finishing those books, I outlined my next one. Such excitement. Such promise. Such hope. But outlined is all I did for months.
Was it the usual writer’s block we all suffer that prevented me from charging on? Not at all. It was plain fear and dread.
What stopped me from moving forward was thinking about the time it would take to finish the manuscript. The sore hands and aching back. The hours in my office when I could be doing something else. The doubts I could write something worth reading. Just the thought of the number of months I would devote to such a work.
Sorry, now that sounded like complaining.
Then as I always do, I beat down the fear and dread long enough to start the book. I remember how much I love to write and tell stories, and when I don’t, I feel like a part of me has been voided out like a figure in a snow storm. That sounds corny, but any writer will tell you it’s damn true.
Once I am into the book, of course, I still worry whether I can carry it off and finish, and whether the result will be a good story and well written and say something about the human condition, as well as entertain. But it is the process and love of writing and the excitement of creating that make me keep typing away.
Yeah, writing is hard work and will leave you crazy and frustrated, but I hope, I will be proud of what I put on the page. That my characters and story will live, and as a writer, that I’ll feel alive, too.
I’m more than 17,000 words into my new book. It is a start.
