A New Topic, A New Plan

And now for something completely different. You may have noticed a few changes over there on the sidebar (if you aren’t reading this on a feed, and thus not enjoying my lovely blog design and lovingly maintained sidebar). Yes, those are progress meters for three secret projects, along with a badge proclaiming my membership in the 1,000 words a day project.

I’m attempting to create new and better habits at the office. Now, 1,000 words a day can be very different from 1,000 usable words a day. This has been a very hard lesson for me to learn the past few months when it has turned out that entire weeks of work were in fact, not usable. And every time I realized that all the forward motion I’d been making was down the wrong path, and I’d have to double back and start all over again (this is why I seriously don’t get people who think that just because I’ve plotted my books out in advance that I somehow know what’s going to happen — my synopsis still resembles my manuscript in the vast majority of respects, but I’ve got as much, if not more, stuff in the cut file than in the completed draft) — every time I realized that, I got depressed, and stopped writing. Maybe for a few days. Maybe for a week. It was so hard to turn around, to cut those pages or chapters or vast swaths of darlings, and to try to move the book in the improved, if unwritten, direction.

It’s been rough. It’s been rough on me, on my health and anxiety levels; on Sailor Boy, whose had to fly solo for just about every social event of the summer while I stayed home and fretted/wrote/rewrote; on my editor, who might suspect that the phrase “one more week” should be programmed into my email as an auto-response; and on Rio, who missed more than a few morning walks because Mommy was stressed out about making her deadline.

I need to be able to teach myself to write in a way where I don’t get upset when I realize I’ve messed up the manuscript. Some writers are okay with “writing crap” then going back and cleaning it up. I have a really hard — nearly impossible — time doing that. The “crap” (or, as I like to think about it, the “wrong thing”) nags and nags and I can’t get it out of my mind, it infuses every aspect of what follows. It’s still there, still affecting it, still wrong, and it’s making everything that comes after it wrong too. This is the way my brain works. After ten completed books, I’ve come to accept that, as I have come to accept that I need to write my synopses first, so I have a road map of my story, and how I need to write in order, otherwise I won’t know what has happened and where my character’s heads are at in any given scene. (I’m aware that these two issues are interrelated.)

But what I also need is to not spend a week not writing a word because I have to fix this scene before I can go anywhere with my book, and I don’t know how to fix this scene. Sailor Boy came up with a good solution to this problem: two projects. He said I was much happier and more productive when I was writing two books at once, which I was the vast majority of time between 2005-2008. If I got stuck on one, I wrote on the other until things fell into place. That hasn’t been the case this year.

I hadn’t really thought of that.

And, this is the perfect time to begin pursuing my new goal, since I am now officially out of contract for the first time in over four years. Oh, I’ve got a few anthologies in the works (I’m very excited about them) but no new books. (Please note: there is a second killer unicorn book. It will be released in fall of 2010. I contracted for it in 2007, and am working on the revision/production process now. In writer terms, you are out of contract when you, the author, have fulfilled all your contracted duties, like turning in the manuscript you contracted to write.)

It’s very freeing, and yet very scary all at once. I know what I want to write next (again, see sidebar). Indeed, working on this book this year has done more to spark ideas for completely different projects in my head than all the brainstorming I’ve done since 2005.

Yes, my first book ideas since 2005 have all come to me in the last 12 months. They were not lying when they said that necessity was the mother of invention.

Nor were they lying when they went on about 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. Lots of truisms lying around.

I have friends who prefer this out of contract state. They say it helps their creative juices. I know one very successful author who only sells one book deals. She’s had bad experiences trying to write the second book of a two book deal. I know another author who only sells completed books. She prefers delivering a fully conceived-of project to a publisher, that way there are no mistakes about what the book will be, and no chance that she will find herself under deadline and having written 40k of a bad book. (Again, something learned from experience.) I’m intrigued by these methods. I’ve only ever sold on proposal, and only two book deals. I’ve also only sold series books, which include the added stress of knowing that you might start a series that is never completed.

It would be nice to try something different. Write a stand-alone, do a one-book deal, finish a book before trying to sell it. And I know only one of those is visible from the consumer side of things — a standalone novel. I think it’s funny that I’ve become known as a series writer, given that Secret Society Girl was my first ever attempt at writing something in a series. I don’t actually think of myself that way. I have told a few friends about one of these projects, and they were surprised that it wasn’t a series idea, because of course, that’s “what I do.” Except it’s not. Maybe it’s what I’ve done, but even with five books on the shelves, I still think of myself as in the beginning of my career.

If I do sell these projects, I’ll give them names. I’m superstitious about that. But, in the meantime, I shall be working on them, and steadily, too. (that is, when I’m not working on revisions for my current contracted book.) So probably 1k of new writing or unspecified-k of revisions.

I’ll let you know how it goes