Hello Book Three!!!

This is partly old news. My publisher asked for books 2 and 3, partly because I told them they'd be done by now- my mistake. And so I spent many months editing them both together. (The drafts were complete before I said this)

I read the opening to some friends and they made one small suggestion- reintroducing the characters in book two. This led to a massive rewrite that seemed impossible. Those small changes in chapter one caused a domino effect where I had to make changes throughout the book, and it felt like an entirely new rewrite.

Last week it was like this dam broke and all of a sudden I was sailing through pages, loving the story. Where it could take days to fix a page, it was like hundreds of pages sailed by and I was suddenly sailing into book three, which so far has been cake.

Sigh of relief!

Straka said:

Ah the roller coaster of writing. Congrats on your deal. I think the only thing good about being unpublished is no deadlines

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Roller coaster is the right word. Actually, before finding a publisher, I always felt I had a looming deadline which seemed to go on forever. And there was no dangling carrot. It's just a different kind of pressure. That pressure was "Will I ever get it right, making changes in pacing... etc."

I think that because of the delays in publishing Book One, I've sort of felt like Book Two is my second query- no room for errors. Lol- like they could change their minds. "Oops- nice first book, but he can't sustain it..."

willietheshakes said:

Get. Out. Of. My. Head.

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A little "Phoenix" moment? - from x-men for those who don't know.

Straka said:

I actually feel that ALL the time. I was in a cafe with my g/f chatting with her and during a quite spot I started tapping on the table while I was thinking about my work's next scene. Then I realized I was actually typing it out (even hitting "backspace" when I realized I would have mistyped something if there was a real keyboard)

Otherwise whenever I don't write I actually get headaches. But I set goals daily or weekly goals for myself to keep the ball rolling.

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The whole process is daunting, which is why these little "feel-good" moments are necessary. We isolate ourselves in a small space, tapping away on a keyboard endlessly with little feedback.

Then when there is feedback, there's that sigh or momentary rejoicing if another likes it. But in about two days that doesn't mean anything unless they were a literary agent.

Now you become that kid in a gym class of about five thousand kids, all jumping up and shouting, "Put me in coach!" You don't even know if the coach looked at the kids in the back row where you're standing.

Straka said:

It is an amazingly inefficient process if the goal in mind is getting rich. Where as a company will do market research, testing and development to see what new product will be bought by the masses... all we can do is write, send it out and hope for the best. And when that fails, write some more.

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Lol- these boards have been educational about the realities, haven't they!
You're right about the whole marketing thing. It's just another sobering side of the industry, in that the author has to be proactive about this.

I'm cautiously hopeful because the film company has it's own marketing. If they can add a link to their fanbase that would help a great deal. The publisher has talked to me about marketing ideas, both their's and mine.

aliajohnson said:

Bolding is mine. I'd like to second this.





That's what I'd like to know. My editor is marking up my second book right now. *bites nails* Worth the anxiety, though. . .I think.

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Lol, you poor dear! I think when book three is finally done and -if they like it, I think I'll start to worry less. Then if one out of three stinks, they'll say- well you got two right, and we'll give you some slack to fix this garbage.

Tips? Wow. Maybe five books in I can say something of real value?

I'll give it a shot. There are two kinds of tips- one relates to the writing, the other to finding a publisher.

On writing. I learned how to write in stages. I'm horrified by what I wrote before, and at the time I thought it was fine. I always took other people's feedback seriously. I believe there is wisdom in a multitude of counsel. And so, I believed in my story, but had to come to terms with my weaknesses as a writer and fix them.

I realised I couldn't expect an agent to overlook my flaws and see the story. Some comments were very positive, which gave me hope. But the ones that improved my story were sometimes eviscerating (like being flayed alive)

One agent gave me the chance to rewrite an intro and I rushed it. She then commented on other things before rejecting it. Her comments were like gold nuggets but they left me depressed. I remember thinking "I have a fatal flaw in my writing!"

So I had to be stubbornly willing to do whatever it takes to make this work. I wrote new beginnings, changed pacing- adding more events between narrative to speed things up.

I realized that one flawed chapter could kill my story.

On the getting it out there part. I think we can't be bashful. Our tendency is to hope the system works. It doesn't always- I think. So I looked for unconventional ways to market this- bordering on the pathetic and shameless.

Some things I believe are left up to providence (divine intervention) but we have to be willing to knock. I'd go to "meet the agent" events at a local college. But this helped me to figure out how to market my book. When I said it was Genre Epic Fantasy, some agents didn't bat an eye. But when I said it could be marketed as YA fantasy (I have a fifteen year old main character) some gave me their cards and said to contact them.

If you look at my Myspace, it's a walking Bilboard. Ultimately Myspace helped in this whole process, which I will explain later.

Lol- do you really want to hear this?

First, I think I looked at all the options, conventional and not.

willietheshakes said:

I think (emphasis on the 'think') that a lot of my insecurity will be relieved if book the second turns out well. I've been worrying about it -- quality wise -- since before the first one came out. I've got the whole 'difficult second album' thing in my mind, and what I want with book-the-second is to have it be as good, if not better, than Before I Wake. I just don't want to be a one-trick pony, you know?

(Of course, the sales -- both rights and books -- of Before I Wake have added another layer of pressure and anxiety. Multiple levels, actually. But I'm trying to put those out of my mind for the moment.)

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I sympathize on every level.

Gary Clarke said:

I absolutely get where you're coming from. There has been such a huge response to book one that I'm scared by it. I found myself writing book three all the time looking over my shoulder and wondering 'but will they like it if I do this?' It was only when I threw that all into the air and started writing for myself again that it started to flow for me.

Though my editor has read book two and assured me there's no big problems, In my noodle I'm still going 'what if that's just to get me to relax and finished book three' LOL!

Got to tell you, when I mentioned this to my agent and expressed the naive opinion that I'd be 'ok when I knew book two was approved' she laughed til she cried. She said no good writer is ever 'ok' they're always worrying about the next book. Sheesh. That's great. We'd better stock up on indigestion tablets then.

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Thanks for sharing this. Strange as it is, it's comforting to know others like you have struggled with these same kinds of thoughts. It's kind of like that fear that at midnight our dream coach will turn into a pumpkin.