What I’m Doing Differently with Book Two

Nothing compares to the high of finishing a book. I rode on that high until I started thinking of all the random characters and useless stories that litters its pages. My heart sinks even now thinking of the tumultuous editing phase it will be undergoing at the first of 2023. I still believe it’s a good story, but it’s incredibly messy and will take a lot to clean it up.

Before I jump into what I’ll be doing differently with Book Two, I’m going to pinpoint a few things that did not work this time around.

I started this story two years ago and had added to it only on the whim of inspiration and motivation.When I finally decided to become serious about finishing the book, I had a bunch of loose ends to try to connect. (I didn’t even think about taking them out for those random little ends were my “babies”).I was so focused on just writing that I failed to give myself enough time to plan out a basic plot for my story. Characters were randomly thrown in at the end when they should have made an appearance in the beginning and information that the character suddenly knows later was supposed to be given sooner. (Read my post, “Writing with a Plan”, for more on my non-planning struggles.)I battled insecurities and shear terror that my story would not come together like I wanted it to. Most days I started the day with the mindset that I would never finish my book.

Perhaps you can see yourself in these difficulties I highlighted. I’ve talked to other college students and new writers who have shared similar sentiments. Just know you’re not alone! As I said in my last blog: “It’s a terrifying act of faith, believing that your work will not be in vain- that people will appreciate and see the same thing you had seen all along.” (Read article here.)

If you believe enough in your story to write it down, then there’s someone out there who will believe in it enough to read it.

It was such a sweet time when I finished Book One. I took two weeks off to rest my brain and to switch mental gears. When I got back to working on Book Two, however, I felt as though my imagination train, which had been hauling an entirely different world for four months, was screeching to a halt and trying as fast as it could to go in another direction. It was almost physically painful. For one, I didn’t know what to do. Like I said before, I had started Book One a long time ago on a random stroke of imagination. I had slowly built up its world through relaxed day dreaming over two years. Now I’m expecting to write an entire book based on a world that hasn’t even been dreamed about yet! After some thinking and reading writer resources and many late night episodes of Alone (not a direct help to solving my predicament, but a great show nonetheless), I finally determined the steps I needed to take with Book Two.

Things I’m Doing Differently:

Daydreaming instead of writing. I dedicated the full month of July to daydreaming and building a chapter-by-chapter plot. Daydreaming gets a bad rap for being done when it shouldn’t be or getting in the way of doing real work. However, that’s how our brain works. In my medical school preparations I read a book on studying (nerdy, right?) and it revolutionized the way I prioritized my time. Your brain does more imagination work when you’re doing other things than when you are focused eight ours a time on one thing (like studying). The theory is that if you played as hard as you studied, you would allow your brain the freedom to roam other parts of its spongy self to come up with a solution for your problem. So this month was all about me playing hard and giving myself the freedom to create a world and be inspired while still working in structure.I’m making a stupid plot structure. I say this with great aggravation at my old self for writing Book One by the seat of my pants. I’ve been told that is a writing style, and I still believe I’m that kind of writer- but it sucks. Just as with toddlers, I need safe boundaries I know I can play within. So between all the fun adventures of teaching art at a summer kids camp and lead at a teen beach camp, I slowly began to build my story structure. It’s kind of cool how wonderful it was to start from scratch and build a plot. I kept thinking, “Wow, Book One is a load of trash, why didn’t I do this before?”STICK WITH THE PLOT LINE. As you can see, I’m very passionate about this, not because I observe such frequent tragedies in other books, but rather because I tend to be a free-going spirit and can careless for guidelines and rules — especially when my hair-brained idea is just too cool to NOT find a way to squish it in the story. Sigh.Get a “plot journal”. Halfway through my writing of Book One I realized that I needed a physical book to write plot notes and story details (like character profiles, clothing types, the community’s traditions, etc.) so that I could remember them later on. This helped me SO much so that the moment I finished Book One, I got another pretty journal to start jotting down ideas for Book Two.

And there it is! I’m sure this list will get longer as I learn about new ways to do things. The high from finishing my last book is long gone- in fact it has been trashed in light of what I have learned, but my hopes and motivation are not dashed. I am so grateful to have come to the other side of finishing my first professional book and having learned so much.

As long as I have a cup of iced sugar espresso, I’ll be going strong.

A. R. Bledsoe

Visit arbledsoe.com for more info on the author and her upcoming book.