it never gets old...

Coming home to find a box on your porch and opening said box to find your ARCs!!!! I got galleys of ALL THAT BURNS yesterday.

This book was hard to write. I mean--every book is hard to write--but this one had the extra challenge of being my first sequel. I stressed and sweated and cried over this book, and so it's really wonderful to finally see it in true novel form! It's crazy to think I started with nothing almost 2 years ago and now I have a book!!!

The cover is still a secret, so I had to take pictures that wouldn't compromise the reveal that will take place on June 26th.

ALL THAT BURNS - coming to a bookstore near you February 10th, 2015!!

The arrival of a third book of course necessitates a new "all the books I've written" photo! Look at ALL THAT BURNS sandwiched between its two loving literary siblings!!

And to think, this time last year I hadn't even gotten ARCs of ALL THAT GLOWS yet! It's crazy that I now have three book sized things I can call mine. My lovelies. *hugs them all*

Okay, off to work on more future lovelies!

milestones.

Yes. I've been bad at blogging.

Scratch that. Abysmal at blogging.

How do you cure something like blog burnout? I don't really know. Mostly I feel like I don't have much to say right now. It's been a strange time, this wait between novel sale and novel publication. I mean, a lot of things have happened, but they aren't really things I can talk about on my blog.

However, one big thing did just happen that I can talk about.

I finished writing the rough draft of ALL THAT GLOWS 2.

YAY!!!

I started writing July 23rd (there was a two month break in there to work on a different project, as well as some time for the great house move).

5 months. 116,000 words.

Not bad. Only now I have to go back in and turn those words into something legible. (HA).

Writing this sequel has been a strange process. There were times when it felt like I would never actually get it all written down. My average pace is about 1,000 words a day (basically 4 pages or a page per hour of writing time).

Okay, I'm going to go celebrate my rough draft victory now. 

one step forward. two steps back.

The title of this post is what it has felt like trying to get out the rough draft of my current WIP.

I am a word-count ho. This means that I measure a lot of my writing productivity on how many words I type out in a day, a week, a month, etc. Sometimes this is a good thing, because it forces me to write when I would rather slouch across the couch and watch TV. Other times it is bad.

How can writing lots of words be bad? You might ask. Isn't that your job?

Good point. And yes it is. But my job as an author isn't just writing out a bunch of words. It's writing out a bunch of good words that tie together into a cohesive and hopefully emotionally significant story.

Whenever I get too focused on words, I sometimes forget to stop and make sure they're good. I don't take the time I really need to go back and read what I wrote and reflect on where the story needs to go.

When I started out on Book 2 (ALL THAT GLOWS's sequel), I was determined to write straight through. I wouldn't take time to revise or rewrite. I would get the bulk of the writing out of the way and revise later.

This did not happen.

Around page 75 or so I realized that in order for me to figure out the end of the story, I needed to fix up the beginning (ie revise and figure out what the heck is going on). I tried to follow an outline. I really did. But I will always be a pantser (organic plot finder) when it comes down to it.

As of now, I have about 120 pages in my sequel word document. And 40 pages of scenes I've deleted. It's taken me about two months to work up to this point. I got really upset when I compared my speeds to writing the rough draft of ALL THAT GLOWS (which only took me about four months, and I was working full time). But then husband reminded me that I didn't go back and revise. So I'm guessing this only means good things. It's showing my growth as a writer, that I'm going back and finding my story at the very roots and growing it from there. Something I didn't do the first time around with ALL THAT GLOWS. Hopefully this will cut back the amount of revision I have to do post fact.

Hopefully.

But right now I can't worry about that. I can only focus on making my words count. Each and every one of them.

why novel writing is like giving birth

During the past month I've come to a singular conclusion.

Writing books is like giving birth.

I've written several books. I have never actually birthed a child. But hear me out.

The other day I was moaning and groaning about my current WIP to my tireless, stalwart husband who hears me moan and groan about these things quite often. In one of my more drama-queen moves, I threw my hand over my brow and said, "This book is trying to kill me."

Then, after a wave of deja-vu, I sat up and said, "I'm pretty sure I've said that before."

Lo and behold, I did. Turns out Cutthroat Novel was also trying to kill me. Which is why I nicknamed it Cutthroat Novel in the first place.

It's funny, because even if I try really hard, I can't really remember how terrible and brutal those first few months with Cutthroat were. But according to le blog, they were. While in the midst of the rough draft throat of LUMINANCE HOUR 2, I have come up with a theory. Writers only write second novels (and third and fourth and etc), because they forget what an utter, terrifying, agonizing process writing an entire novel is. Just like women have more than one child because their brain blanks out on how painful the actual labor was.

Why did I choose this profession again?

Just kidding. Just like the mothers always tell me, the end product is more than worth the pain it costs. I just have to keep reminding myself that as I keep sweating away!

it's a hard-knock life.

I'm about sixty pages into LH2 as we speak. Which means I'm doing a lot of this:

Tough life.

Meanwhile, you know you're on the right track with a rough draft when you finish a scene, reread it, and then realize, "Oh dear God, this is a mess." It's easy to forget how messy and all over the place rough drafts are. They're pretty much the equivalent of a puppy who had not been house-trained and just drank a gallon of water and is dancing all over your imported Turkish rugs. Endearing, but a lot of work. Especially when your end goal is to make it a top-rated show dog.

Okay, off to clean some metaphorical pee from my manuscript. Or cyber-stalk Kate Middleton. Both count as work, right?

on the verge of book 2

As I write this I'm standing on the edge, gazing down into the deep, plunging abyss.

The edge, of course, is LUMINANCE HOUR 2 and the deep, plunging abyss are all the words I haven't written yet!

That's... a long way down.

These cliffs aren't foreign to me. I've stood on them many times before, when the stories I dreamed up were no more that images swirling inside my head, waiting to be planted to the page, word by laborious word. I've jumped and let the fragments of words piece themselves into sentences, scenes and stories. It's a really cool thing to see, to realize the world that sprang to life from inside your head.

But sequels... Sequels are strange beasts. You have to take the plot and character arcs you tied up in a neat little bow in book one and unravel them all over again. You have to push your characters and your story further without being gimmicky or predictable. You have to challenge your world-building, your writing, your plot twists and take them to the next level. Add all this with the pressure of writing under contract (with deadlines and editors and fans all piercing you with invisible stares) and you have yourself a book 2 writing scenario.

I'm scaring myself just writing about it!

Apparently I'm not alone in the fear of starting a sequel. A lot of the Luckies (YA and MG authors debuting in 2013) have blogged about this very issue: the paralysis of the blank page. Erin Bowman, author of TAKEN, wrote a great post here about why starting a new novel is terrifying. Ever. Single. Time. It doesn't matter if you've written one book or twenty. Every new project has it's own new string of challenges.

So I'll stand at the edge of this sequel cliff and say, "Okay, Book 2! Bring it on!"