DRIVE

     It was a wonderful feeling today. I drove down to the printers to pick up this:

My second novel, THE MONSTER IN THE BASEMENT, was a reality. Not just letters on a computer screen, not just endless hours of imaginings and plottings and connivings and characters whispering in my ear, telling me the story should go north and not south...
Holding that bound first draft is magic. That's all I can call it: MAGIC.
     I had read many times, by authors more experienced than myself, that the second book was always the hardest to write. Maybe that first book came bursting out in furious righteousness, demanding to be born and before you knew it, the book was there. You don't know how you did it or where it came from, but it arrived safe and sound; your first literary child. 
     My first book, THE SPIRIT OF THE MOON, was published in June 2011, an accidental birth of glorious proportions. It was in September 2011, that I decided to write the sequel. I had a vague idea of what the story was about, who some of the characters where (new and old) and what I wanted to achieve. I knew it would be bigger in scale in some regards, expanding the microcosm of the town featured in my adventures, SOVEREIGN CREEK. But the themes also had to be relevant, to where I was in that moment. And so a vague outline was born. I knew how the novel would start and end, a crucial scene was written first that plays into the overall story arc of the six planned books of the series. But then everything went dead, I wrote the first chapter and after that nothing was coming. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't stand facing that page, day after day. I was a frustrated, emotional train wreck. I felt like a con artist, a bad stage magician. I read the prophesies and they came true. 
     It was in December that I contemplated stopping the book, shunting it into that little corner on the laptop, never to be seen again. Maybe it was a break I needed, get away from it all, and come back fresh in the new year...which is what I DID. And what a difference it made.
     I guess what I want to say is, when then manuscript is getting you down, when nothing seems to work and you feel like a fraud, a failure, a wanna be writer playing in the big pond...don't give up. Don't ever give up. And if you absolutely feel that your story is dead, then give it a funeral fit for a king and move on. 
     I finally understand that the difference between good and bad writers is this: Good writers DO and BAD writers amble around, procrastinating and moaning. Don't worry, just DO! If you're a writer, sitting in the empty space, all alone inside your head, staring at the blank screen, then decide right now... what type of writer are you?


Going to see JOHN CARTER at the movies tomorrow so hopefully I can do a mini review in the next couple of days. I have high hopes for this so fingers and whatever other extremities you have, crossed.


Cheers,


John