The Trouble With Sequels

I like to think that when my actual blogging goes neglected for long periods of time, that you guys all know it’s because I’m busy writing. The truth is that while that’s often the case, this time it hasn’t been.

The last month has been agonising. You would be forgiven for thinking that’s how all my months feel, but no. I can be a little dramatic (I’m a writer; what do you want from me?) but truly, these last few weeks have wiped me out. I haven’t been this tired since I did six weeks without a day off as the manager of a clothes shop. Anyone who thinks that sounds easy has obviously never worked in retail, let alone in management.

Anyway! I digress. I’m tired, and a lot of things have been happening. I’m not going to bore you with discussions about the Penny Dreadful finale, or Brexit, or work, or the agony of wisdom teeth, or long lost relatives, or personal bereavements. It’s all terribly dull, not to put too fine a point on it, and I have a therapist for that. What I am going to talk to you about, however, is the pitfalls of sequels, self-publishing, and knowing when to stop.

Anyone who follows me on other social media, specifically tumblr and twitter (where my “professional filter” tends to be more of a vague gesture than a strict set of rules) will know that I’ve been struggling a lot with book two, despite proclaiming not that long ago that it was basically finished. Not for the first time in my life I had the wind knocked out of me by a pretty severe bout of self-doubt, and instead of working on the first draft of book three, I stared into space and even began another rewrite of book two.

I’m so afraid, you see. Book one wasn’t a success in the commonly acceptable way. I didn’t sell many copies at all, I have less than 2% of reviews comparable to Kindle downloads, and I receive regular messages from strangers telling me that I have no business writing. Now there are days when I want to quit because of all of the above, but I don’t. The reason I don’t is because there is a handful of people who enjoyed the book! People who go out of their way to make sure I know they enjoyed it, that they’re waiting for the sequel, and want to talk about the characters and the story and where things might possibly progress for Naomi in the future.

It sustains me through the bad patches. I have a folder on my desktop, labelled “FEEL-THE-LOVE” where I have screenshots of nice things people have said/written about The Redwood Rebel. On the very bad days I click through it to remind myself of what I’m doing. My mission statement, if you will: So Long As Even One Person Loves It, I Will Keep Going.

This is where things get sticky, though. I swing like a deranged pendulum between “some people loved book one” to “what if they end up hating book two”. I’ve read many a series myself where book one has been so promising, but the sequel leaves me feeling flat and a little disappointed. I don’t want to do that to any of the few readers I have, and so I’ve been working my tail off to make certain that book two is the absolute best I can make it.

As a self-published author, this can be quite difficult. The buck stops with me. I don’t have an agent or a publisher to look it over and tell me something needs to be changed. I have a wonderful group of beta readers, all of whom I’m incredibly grateful for, but they can only advise me so far. I have to decide for myself when the book is done, and that’s been really hard.

Book one was easier, because I reached a point where I put my pen down and thought to myself that it was ready to send out to prospective agents. That didn’t go well at all, of course, but I managed and I kicked my backside over that finish line anyway.

This time I haven’t had that defining moment of knowing the book is ready. I was waiting for it, but it never came. When I finished the eighth draft I felt like it was good, but I couldn’t be sure if that was just me copping out because I couldn’t bring myself to rewrite it again. I think that’s why I’ve been in this limbo ever since, and hoping for some sort of closure.

Today, at last, it happened.

I found a post on tumblr with some links to editing tools, one of which was this one. It’s a narrator program, and considering it’s free, it’s a pretty decent one, too. I pasted book two into it, and I hit play. At first it was sort of a laugh. I thought it might help me find typos (which it did) but as I listened through chapter one, I played about with the voice options, and my book suddenly came to life.

I listened to it for three days, before and after shifts at The Day Job. I lost a lot of sleep by sitting up so late and getting up so early, but this morning I finished it at last, and I just sat very quietly, looking at the last line. I thought to myself, “You know what, Lorna? That was good.”

…Not ashamed to admit that I then typed in “Banana” and “Bloop” and laughed for an embarrassingly long amount of time.

I went back, I made changes, and now I’m ready.

The book is ready.