The View from my Office Chair: The Second Book
Ok, I’ve successfully written, revised, edited, and published my first novel so the second one should be a piece of cake right? Lovely thought, but no.
Like most aspiring authors the first book I published had been part of my life for longer than my children. I poked along, abandoned it when the going got tough, reread parts when I came back to the keyboard, and reworked them over and over. By the time I hit the publish button I could see a good decade of my life between the pages.Now, move to book two. I actually have lived with this storyline for at least half the time I have lived with my first, but unlike my first novel, I only had about half the story actually written when I published my first. What that means to a writer who is trying to create a career out of this foolish work, is that I now have to speed my original process up by about five years.Put the abbreviated timeline against the knowledge that people who have read and enjoyed my first book, are expecting the same level of quality with the next one. It doesn’t create an atmosphere of creative freedom. What it creates are bouts of fear complete with sweaty palms, headaches, and self-deprecation so bad I understand why the greats were known for drinking.You hear all the time about fabulous authors who wrote one book, then never published again. I would be willing to bet that many of them got crippled by fear. It is very daunting. With my first book, I had every intention of getting it published, but while I was writing it, I didn’t have any expectations. Now, there is a benchmark.Some days I have to force myself to write because I NEED to get this draft finished. With the last one, I had more freedom to do the creative dance, of writing when the mood struck, not now. I also, can’t get stuck in the middle and stew for days or weeks about how to fix it. Nope, I either highlight it in red, meaning it needs a huge rewrite, or I put a lot of question marks after the passage where I stop and move to the next scene or chapter, knowing that I will have to deal with it in revisions.I remind myself often of a few things: 1) not everyone is going to like my second book, no matter how hard I work 2) this story is not my first story. It has different characters and different conflicts, so I shouldn’t be comparing them, and 3) I am not the same writer I was when I was drafting my first novel. As I write more, I should be able to be more efficient in my writing, creating a cleaner draft than my very first one.
Will I make mistakes with this second book? Yes. Will this book be the same as the last book? I hope not. The bottom line for me is to remember that this, like life is a process, and like anything the book I write today is not the book I wrote yesterday. It will reflect those things that are happening in my life, and where I am as an artist. I can only set my deadlines, as absurd, as they may feel to me and feel confident that my writing skill has evolved in such a way that I will be able to meet them.I know I will not put out a product I am not happy with, and confident that it is the best product I have at the moment and that will have to be good enough.If you are a writer and working on your second book, thinking it would be so much easier with one book under your belt, but finding it is not, know you are not alone.If you are a reader, please be kind to new authors, because at the writing of a second book, they are still new authors. Know that the process is likely vastly different for them this time around, and it may reflect in the story, but understand that like life writing is a journey not a destination.That is all. Have a fabulous day!Clair.
Like most aspiring authors the first book I published had been part of my life for longer than my children. I poked along, abandoned it when the going got tough, reread parts when I came back to the keyboard, and reworked them over and over. By the time I hit the publish button I could see a good decade of my life between the pages.Now, move to book two. I actually have lived with this storyline for at least half the time I have lived with my first, but unlike my first novel, I only had about half the story actually written when I published my first. What that means to a writer who is trying to create a career out of this foolish work, is that I now have to speed my original process up by about five years.Put the abbreviated timeline against the knowledge that people who have read and enjoyed my first book, are expecting the same level of quality with the next one. It doesn’t create an atmosphere of creative freedom. What it creates are bouts of fear complete with sweaty palms, headaches, and self-deprecation so bad I understand why the greats were known for drinking.You hear all the time about fabulous authors who wrote one book, then never published again. I would be willing to bet that many of them got crippled by fear. It is very daunting. With my first book, I had every intention of getting it published, but while I was writing it, I didn’t have any expectations. Now, there is a benchmark.Some days I have to force myself to write because I NEED to get this draft finished. With the last one, I had more freedom to do the creative dance, of writing when the mood struck, not now. I also, can’t get stuck in the middle and stew for days or weeks about how to fix it. Nope, I either highlight it in red, meaning it needs a huge rewrite, or I put a lot of question marks after the passage where I stop and move to the next scene or chapter, knowing that I will have to deal with it in revisions.I remind myself often of a few things: 1) not everyone is going to like my second book, no matter how hard I work 2) this story is not my first story. It has different characters and different conflicts, so I shouldn’t be comparing them, and 3) I am not the same writer I was when I was drafting my first novel. As I write more, I should be able to be more efficient in my writing, creating a cleaner draft than my very first one.Will I make mistakes with this second book? Yes. Will this book be the same as the last book? I hope not. The bottom line for me is to remember that this, like life is a process, and like anything the book I write today is not the book I wrote yesterday. It will reflect those things that are happening in my life, and where I am as an artist. I can only set my deadlines, as absurd, as they may feel to me and feel confident that my writing skill has evolved in such a way that I will be able to meet them.I know I will not put out a product I am not happy with, and confident that it is the best product I have at the moment and that will have to be good enough.If you are a writer and working on your second book, thinking it would be so much easier with one book under your belt, but finding it is not, know you are not alone.If you are a reader, please be kind to new authors, because at the writing of a second book, they are still new authors. Know that the process is likely vastly different for them this time around, and it may reflect in the story, but understand that like life writing is a journey not a destination.That is all. Have a fabulous day!Clair.
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