The Abyss and Me

This book is kicking my butt.

I realize that I'm the luckiest woman on the planet–hell, I have a job–and I am not discounting that, but with that disclaimer, I feel the need to whine. It really feels like the books get harder and harder to write, and that sucks the marrow out of your soul at 3AM as you stare at the ceiling and think about how if you died, nobody could be mad that you're eight months past your deadline, plus a month past the deadline for the sequel. Okay, not your deadline, mine, but you get the drift. I am letting down the team here in a big, big way, and I can't seem to find the key to finish this book. Key, hell, if I could find a machete to hack my way to the end, I'd take that.

Another disclaimer: I have the most patient, supportive editor and publisher in the known universe, and my agents are a dream; nobody in New York is putting pressure on me. I also have good friends who have offered to read the book, brainstorm the book, do whatever is necessary to help with the book. But at the end of the day, I'm the one who got myself into this story and I have to get myself out. Then they can help, but for right now, I'm in this alone, and that gets a little tense. Plus I haven't done a decent blog post here in months, and that's a disappointment. I like this blog. It deserves better. Well, you all deserve better.

But here I am, staring into the abyss. I have diagrammed this sucker. I have collaged it. I have the soundtrack. I know what the story's about. I love the characters. The woman's journey plot is solid. The mystery not so much, but that's pretty much par for me. And yet I cannot get this book to gel, to move into that sunny, realer-than-real place that means it's alive and kicking. It feels like an acquaintance, not part of me. I'm not part of it. And I have absolutely no idea how to get into it.

December was an awful month, and I'm hoping all that trauma is over and the new year will clear my mind and I'll see the way, but I'm really wondering if some of this isn't age. I've been doing this for twenty years so there should be some accumulated knowledge here and yet, I'm lost, so I'm wondering if I'm not losing brain cells and just don't have the jazz I used to. Or maybe it's that I gravitate to more complex books now; these books were supposed to be easy, simple romps and we're back at the doorstop woman's journey novels again, so maybe I'm just setting the bar higher. Maybe This Time felt like the bar was higher, but I don't know if that's because the bar was higher or I've gotten shorter.

The thing is, this could be an amazing book. It has Stuff. It could be the kind of book that you walk into as a reader and just make yourself comfortable in, the kind of book where everybody knows your name. And then there are supposed to be three sequels, and I know what happens in those, too, and that could be so great, to live in this world for four books. It's just writing them that's kicking my butt. I sit downstairs and vibrate with the tension because I'm not writing the book, and that makes it impossible to write the book, so the book isn't getting written . . .

So now it's 2011, and I'm only eight months past my deadline and I think I've worked my way through most of the stress, and I'm sure this is going to be a fabulous year, so I'll just go work on my book now, and everything will be fine. Really. I'm sure of it. Because otherwise . . .

Me and the abyss. We've been here before, but this is the first time I've felt like jumping.