So here's how writing a book goes... You start off with this great idea, or more like the seedling of an idea. It gets planted in your squishy, pink brain and it stays there. It drives you mad! So you know you have to get it out and the only way to do that is to write the story.
Except that there's a disclaimer on this little seed that you don't see. The disclaimer states that if you try to remove this seed, it will start to grow. It will get bigger and bigger--fuller and fuller!
Before you know it, you've got this full blown tree in your head. I mean, the thing is massive. It reaches from one end of your skull to the other. Its branches contain characters, backstories, cities, and even whole worlds. You can't write just one book to get it out; you have to write three, four, five, or possibly more!
So you toil and fight. You spend whole months of your life trying to make this tree into a story. Finally, by some will of god, you reach the end of the first book. It was by no means easy, but it sure was exhausting--and oh so worth it.
It's the best feeling of your life!
But you love this story so much that you want others to experience it too, which means that you have to clean it up. Edit. Edit. Then edit some more. You even muster a small army to help you complete this task. They take their cruel, but effective, axes to it and begin chopping away.
At some point they hand you back a few trash bags filled with wood shavings. You cry and rage at the sky for a few days. The horror! THE HORROR! But by the end of day three, you grab those trash bags, dump out the wood shavings, and begin piecing it together again.
Rebuilding the story doesn't take quite as long this time, but it's an emotional rollercoaster. You learn to let go. Very slowly this seedling, that you turned into a tree (Or I suppose it's just a branch of the tree, if I want this analogy to work), becomes a book.
Anyway, Somehow you love it even more the second time around. Ok you also hate it a little bit because you're so sick of looking at it, but you love it.
Then, yet again, you must send it off to your army...and wait. This is where I am at. The horrible stage where you have to wait to hear if your revisions were good or if you botched the whole dang thing.
I've chosen not to sit idle and worry. I've moved onto the second book. That's a
whole barrel of new awesome. Not even gunna lie. I suppose it's daunting for some to have to start all over again, but this is the fun part for me.
So this blog post was suppose to be about finishing my first book for the second time, and it kinda wasn't. It was mostly about the writing process, wasn't it? Or perhaps it was really more about the progression of writing. An author must perpetually move forward. It's about making the book better, getting it to the next stage.
I'd imagine that some people think that when
The Beast is published (*cough*April9th*cough*Maybe*cough*), I'll be able to sit back and bask in the glory of my finished book. But they are so wrong! Members of my editing army are already asking for the second book. How long after it's published will it take for readers to start asking the same?
So... An author must perpetually move forward.
Thanks for reading <3 -Lindsay Mead
