Hi guys... It's been a while, again.* I do hope you're all well.

This may not be the most appropriate forum for this braindump but it seemed as good a place as any.

So... Novel 1 is finished, for now, after about five years (on and off). Phew. It's in the world, it may or may not get picked up. Yesterday it occured to me that if an agent does express any interest in it / me, one of the first questions they will ask is what else I have up my sleeve.

The answer, at the moment, is nothing at all. In fact, I am boderline petrified of writing another novel, though I do want to do so. I've been reading a lot and have written the first paragrah of loads of short stories, I'm not exactly in a productive phase.

I know these things can't be forced but it is quite unusual for me. At least, when my novel was stalling I found it quite easy to compose a little story, whether or not it was any good. At the moment, I'm just stuck and really do think I've got The Fear... though I'm not sure what I'm scared of!

Someone tell me I'm not alone...?

SK
x




*In my defence, I'm not totally rubbish. I tend to take a few months out a year to concentrate heavily on my writing, before going back to my (usually quite intense) day job. So if anyone remembers me and wonders why I post intensively for several weeks and then disappear for the best part of the next 12 months, it's because that's the nature of my writing life...

Hi Shinykate (great name!)

We've not met before, but your post struck a chord. Perhaps the fear comes from the way you're setting the project up in your mind: The Second Novel. The one agents will ask about on which my career may rise or fall irrevocably. Tall order.

I'd just buy and big new notebook (but then I'd always buy a big new notebook - even for a shopping list) and sketch some ideas in it. Snip bits from the paper, add dreams, things that make you angry or alert or engage you fully. Just build a collection of material than you might tap into.

Maybe read a book or two on structure - Story by McKee or Seven Basic Plots and note whether one plot type appeals more than others. Bit by bit a story will take hold. But setting the bar so high before you begin is like sitting down to write the Great American Novel and getting stuck after It Was A Dark and Stormy Night.

I'm not meaning to be prescriptive, just commenting in how I tackle similar fear in my own writing.



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Oops: buy 'a' not buy 'and'.

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commenting on not commenting in. Off to find second coffee of the day!

Perhaps you just need to play around a bit, do writing exercises, try out different styles with no intention of making them into a novel. Working on the same novel for five years must be like going out with the same person for five years, and you would not expect to rush straight into another serious relationship, would you?

I feel your pain.
Actually, this didn't happen to me with the second novel, or even the third, most likely because I was contracted to very tight schedules. I certainly had lots of self doubt about whether what I was writing was crap, but there was no time to not write iyswim.

However, I have certainly been experiencing The Fear with book four. Once editing finished on book three I was utterly paralysed. I had sveral very good ideas but just couldn't pick one. I wrote synopses and sent the to my agent for his view. He gave it to me, yet still I dithered. I asked everyhone what they thought. Still I couldn't take the step.
I endlessly questioned which would best for me. Which would make the best book. Which I felt most passionate about. I sent myself potty.

I wondered at one point whether I had, by default, given up writing.

Eventually I decided to simply plump for one of the projects. I still wasn't sure it was the right one, but I couldn't stand the indecision, so I went for it.
Then I started writing and it was awful. Slow, painful and forced.
Then I read a wonderful post of Strictly Writing about the shitty first draft. It reminded me that the first draft is always awful but you just soldier on.

Maybe it's just time to jump in. It was for me.

As they say in the States - Feel the Fear and do it anyway.
HB x

Hi Shinykate

I'm at a similar stage. I'm in the midst of subbing my novel to agents and I have lots of ideas for my next one but for some reason I've not started it yet. I think it needs to gel in my mind for a few weeks/months.

I'm also email-checking all the time in case one of the agents gets back to me, so not terribly conducive to writing a novel!

I've decided to spend my writing time getting to grips with short stories. I have a huge file of ideas and first pages but nothing finished as yet. So my challenge is to finish them....

SG

Hi ShinyKate,

I think sometimes it is hard to concentrate on the next project when we are still emotionally entangled with the last one. You say you worked on your first novel for 5 years and are only just in the process of sending it out in the world - you are probably still too involved in the fate of book 1 to really get cracking on book 2. Maybe you just need to let things take their course with this and not worry about book 2 yet. If you feel like writing, write, but try not to worry about it - concentrate on submitting book 1.

Also, if you do have ideas for possible future books, why not write them down? I do that all the time. I have a notebook (red leather if you are wondering, Cherys, it was a Christmas present and seemed too lovely to use until I made it into my ideas book) and I jot down all the project ideas I have - sometimes it's a title and one-line summary, sometimes a couple of paras on characters and/or dilemmas). I will probably never write most of them, but occasionally I enjoy a good browse and think 'what a rubbish idea' or 'ooh, I'd still like to have a crack at that one day'. Just having this little store of potential ideas seems to calm my worries somehow.

Hope it all worlks out for you,
Saturday

PS Cherys, do you think we write because we find the siren song of the lovely notebook too alluring to resist?

Thanks, everyone. Pleased to hear it's not just me.

Yeah, I just need to do it. I know I just need to do it, but, y'know. It does feel like a relationship, sort of - I've had better and I've had worse...! - and indeed one that's not quite over, as Novel I remains very much in my life, and though I'm saying gleefully it's finished, this is surely a subjective term and if anyone takes it off me, there's no doubt they'll want changes. It's a first person novel in a distinctive voice (I hope) and I'm a little wary about banishing it / her from my head until I'm sure I'm done with her for good.

Meanwhile, I'm not the kind of writer who plots - at all. This might be why I'm feeling the pressure to get something new written. When my imaginary maybe agent who adores Novel I asks what I've got planned, I can't even say, "I've got a great idea for Novel II, these are the characters, this is the story, but I've not started it yet."

I find out about characters by writing them, not by thinking them. The plot happens - or did with Novel I - because I let myself write and see where it goes. I swear, I've written three times as many words for the existing novel as have ended up in the final draft; if the plot goes somewhere I don't want it to I just bin it. I know everyone writes like this to an extent but, at least among writers I know, I seem to be quite unusal in having absolutely no idea. For the first nine months of existing novel, I was just writing various related vingettes with no conventional plot - then I had a surreal weekend in the local library where I locked down and tried to work out what order things went in and what gaps I needed to fill. It's a weird technique but it's my technique!

Thing is, at the moment I have no commitment to anyone, no deadlines and indeed no day job (I'm freelance, it's quiet) so I should probably take full advantage of that. Maybe what I need to do is let myself write rubbish for a bit...

SK

I agree with everyone else, that it's very hard to move on when you're still very involved with the previous novel, but that doesn't mean it's worth trying to. Lots of good suggestions about how, too - and certainly by taking the pressure off.

The other thing to remember is that it's very like confronting the puzzling new boyfriend who, in some senses, you scarcely know. The old boyfriend you knew incredibly well, by the end(even if it did all end in tears). It's easy to expect the new relationship/novel to have all the depth and complexity and understanding that you had by the end of the old relationship/novel. Only of course it took time to develop all that depth. Once upon a time Relationship (Novel) One was as sketchy and superficial as Two seems now.

The other thing to remember is that an agent really just wants to be sure that you've got more ideas in your head, and that it's remotely possible that they're things which could be sold under the same name as your first. It really doesn't matter much whether they're true or not at the moment. So if you do get asked about future ideas, the shameless way is to plump for one of the sketchy things you might write a story about, think up a one-sentence description which sounds tasty (one person, one conflict) and say that. From now, to (fingers crossed) being taken on and working more on One and it being (fingers crossed) bought, will actually be quite a while...

Meanwhile, keep your ears and eyes open, carry that notebook everywhere (get a little one which you can - I'm a Moleskine addict) - and something, some day, will suddenly appear, glowing, and demand to be written.

Emma

Emma

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that it's very hard to move on when you're still very involved with the previous novel, but that doesn't mean it's not worth trying to

Shinykate, here's another person feeling just as you do. I finished my first novel over a year ago and have been 'trying' to write the next since then. I work very differently to you, and have a full outline of the next, and have written the first couple of chapters, but I'm not engaged with it. And THANK YOU Emma, for what you just wrote, which sums it up completely, and I hadn't realised it:

The other thing to remember is that it's very like confronting the puzzling new boyfriend who, in some senses, you scarcely know. The old boyfriend you knew incredibly well, by the end(even if it did all end in tears). It's easy to expect the new relationship/novel to have all the depth and complexity and understanding that you had by the end of the old relationship/novel. Only of course it took time to develop all that depth. Once upon a time Relationship (Novel) One was as sketchy and superficial as Two seems now.

This is EXACTLY the problem, and it's a great relief to see it. I'd been expecting the new novel to stack up just like the old one, forgetting that it took time to work my way into it emotionally.

The other thing that occurred to me, Shinykate, is that you are used to working under pretty harsh deadlines for your job, and therefore your writing probably has to be squeezed into the spaces between. Now that you suddenly have a big, open deadline-less space to work in, perhaps it's TOO open? Maybe if you set yourself a task, to be completed in a month, say, of writing a short story. And not worrying about what it will be 'about' - there's a brilliant poem by Paul Matthews which goes: 'Start anywhere. Start with a yellow chair.'

Susiex

Agree with Emma about agents.
I think, particularly in the dire current market, agents want to know you're not a one trick pony. But just because you say 'you're working on something doesn't mean you're wedded to it.
After book one I started a totally unrelated book, but everyone - agent, publishers, writing group - said I should write a series. So I dumped the second WIP and promptly wrote a series. No-one seemed to care that that hadn't been my original plan.
My agent was far more bothered that I had more ideas and that I was working on them, not so much what the ideas were iyswim.
HB x

In my naivety (feel free to substitute that for stupidity), I started to write book two before I'd sold book one. Then again, it's easier to do that when writing a series . I was writing book three while editing book two and I'm now doing the same thing with book three/four.
I have in effect become a whore to my publisher who insist that the way to grow me as an author is to have a new book on the shelf every six months. And for the first time since I began this madness, I'm experiencing the thing that WWers describe as The Fear.
I couldn't bring myself to start book four. I faffed around and did just about anything that I could to put off starting it. I started to count off the remaining months before I needed to submit, and chewed my fingers to stumps.

But then I watched the excellent TED speech by Elizabeth Gilbert again (thank you so much, Emma D for originally posting this), and bought into the 'if you build it, they will come' theme. One of the hardest things about writing is sitting your arse down in front of the keyboard and deciding to write. But when you do, the muse wakes up and comes to spy over your shoulder, and if he feels like it, he might even help out with an idea or two.

Not for everyone, but it works for me.

I don't think it's daft to start book two while subbing book one - I think it's a great idea. Impaerative, even. It's stops you getting all bonkers about not selling the first one. Though not for you, I guess, cos if number one hadn't been bought then number two probably wouldn't have been either.

I know I began a book two the day I sent off my first sub of book one. Just when I goit my agent that particular book two was shelved.

And six months -sheesh - I thought my deadlines were tight.
HB x

But new boyfriends are exciting and mysterious! I guess I am not particularly excited, yet. If any of the opening paragraphs I've written so far were boys, we'd not get beyond the first date. In fact, I think I'd climb out of the bathroom window halfway through the date...

OK, perhaps I've pushed the metaphor a bit too far...

I don't tend to get excited until I've written something I like. I do, it's true, just need to write until something. And yes, I carry my notebook everywhere, and yes it's lovely. (I have a stationery fetish.)

Thanks again,

SK

Stefland, glad you found it helpful

If anyone's wondering what he's talking about, Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk is here and yes, I hadn't thought of it, but it's extremely relevant to this kind of problem (as a few dozen other problems...):

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html

And I agree that starting Two as soon as One is out and doing the rounds is very true.

On the other hand I resolutely refuse (not that I have to be very resolute, as agent and editor entirely understand) to discuss what I'm doing with anyone till the book is finished as far as I can get it, and ready for their (perhaps considerable) input. I couldn't do it any other way.

Emma

How do you keep the worry worm at bay, Emma?
Don't you start to panic that it's just not working at all?
hb X