Giving Up
No, I’m not giving up being a professional writer. Or writing full time. I am having far too much fun, and I haven’t run all the way through my savings yet. (I have two years of income saved…If I’m careful.)
When I started this venture, I created a project plan for how long it would take me to write every novel, as well as how long it would take to go through the make-it-not-broke draft, and to incorporate first reader comments.
In this first marvelous plan, I just specified Novel A, Novel B, etc.
At some point, I came up with the list of novels that I was going to write. One after another. For two and a half years.
And it all looked great…on paper.
Then the plan met reality.
I tried, I really tried, to generate excitement for the novel I was supposed to write.
And if you look at that sentence, you’ll see the issue.
“Supposed to write” is never going to work for me.
I need to say, “get to write.”
I can’t write according to a scheduled list of books that I think I should write. In the order I think I should write them. Instead, I must write the books that I feel passionate about. That I am looking forward to writing.
Giggling is required.
As my sweetie pointed out to me, if I’m not manically giggling about what I’m writing, the writing will turn into a chore. Work. And not fun.
This means I won’t necessarily know what book it is that I’m going to write until I’m just about to start writing it.
So I’ve given up writing War Among the Crocodiles at this point. I will write the novel eventually. I have kind of a plot and characters and so on.
It just isn’t the novel that makes me giggle currently.
Currently, I get to write this story that I thought of over the weekend. That I plotted out and have already started writing (and OMG do I love writing it!) It’s called, The Changeling Troll - a different kind of ugly-duckling story.
And I get to giggle.
Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.