Holy crap, I need to write another book!

I haven’t written a word in weeks. There I’ve said it. Now if you’re a writer you’ll know how terrifying a sentence that is. Generally not writing doesn’t much trouble me—I’ve gone weeks, even months without writing a single sentence. Somehow though, 2 months post publication of my first book, I’m suddenly frantic.

I’ve gotten emails from readers telling me how much they enjoyed “What Binds Us,” how the characters really came alive for them. Inevitably they end with the kindest words possible, “I can’t wait to read your next book,” or something similar. I write and thank each one, silently thanking my Lord, my muse then quietly panic: Holy crap, I need to write another book!

I’m not blocked; there just this silence inside my head as if the usual confederacy of characters who live inside my head, noisily chatting and reproducing, suddenly exhausted, have gone off to bed. In the middle of my party.

As I wait and wait for the party to recommence, for the words for the next book to start flowing, I keep reading about writers who pen sequels and trilogies, writers who crank out two books a year. Feeling inadequate, as if I may not be a “real” writer, after all, I started doing research on the “craft of writing.” Most of the prevailing wisdom seems to insist that one should write every day at the same time to train one’s mind to be creative when one needs it to be. Yeah, uh huh. I actually came across something called “The Snowflake Method” (Google it) which actually made sense and sort of paralleled the way I write. Then came a bunch of articles on creating character profiles. I thought this was an intriguing approach—I usually just develop my characters as I’m writing, fleshing them out and discovering quirks and nuances along the way, which admittedly can lead to some frantic rewriting of earlier passages or can even lead to a subplot. When I read, “I’ve known writers who create 30-50 page character profiles,” I gave up and, shutting down my computer, went to dig around in the garden.

A couple of years ago there was an epic battle in our neighborhood over the installation of a playground in the public park in the middle of the neighborhood. I remember, one woman, a pediatrician and mother, holding her toddler and giving an impassioned speech against the playground. She cited studies that prove children need open green space in order to roam free, to develop their imagination, to dream. I’m thinking she’s right and that’s part of my problem—a life and mind too crammed with work, with to-do lists, with guilt over all the things I haven’t gotten done. I think I need to stop being a writer and go back to just being me. Maybe if I let the yard work go, order a pizza instead of cooking dinner and sit in the yard daydreaming, my characters will come back to me, will gather round and once again whisper their stories into my drowsing ear.