The next book

A week ago Sun­day I went through my man­u­script one final time. Be say­ing final, that means I am no longer mak­ing sub­stan­tive changes, or I’m bored with going over and over and over the same thing, which means I am in need of oth­er eyes.

I ran the text through my spell and gram­mar check­er, there­by tak­ing out some word rep­e­ti­tions, popped in or took out com­mas, found two spelling mis­takes (phew!) saved the changes, and pushed the but­ton that caused the text to be sent. A year’s work. Done. Until my edi­tor gets back to me.

“You should take the day off,” my wife sug­gest­ed. I did, sort of. Did some need­ful house stuff. I felt guilty—because I need to start a new book that will be due shortly.

On Tues­day I knew I should start that book, but I found oth­er things to do, includ­ing get­ting my mail (and water) which is twelve miles dis­tant, and the roads were icy. Did that. (My wife drove) Also did two Skypes with class­es. Found some­thing irrel­e­vant to read, only to find it bor­ing. Bad writ­ing irri­tates me. “I can do bet­ter.” Van­i­ty as a goad.

This morn­ing I lay abed think­ing, I must start that book. I was remind­ed of an old col­lege gag: ”Next week I’m going to stop procrastinating.”

But as I thought about it I real­ized I was ner­vous about start­ing this new book. Had I done enough research? Do I under­stand how I want the sto­ry to work? Have I thought enough about the pro­tag­o­nist? Should I pur­sue that thread? This thread? Will it all be too strong? Or will it be weak? Will it be too shock­ing for my read­ers, my review­ers, for me? Can I meet the expec­ta­tions of my edi­tor? She is strong on my idea. But she bought an idea, not a book.

I got up. I did the dish­es from last night’s din­ner. That helps me think, I told myself. I wrote back to a cou­ple of kids who had writ­ten to me.

Sit down and start! Was it the angel on my left shoul­der who was say­ing that soft­ly, or the dev­il on my right shoul­der scream­ing into my ear?

Maybe a chorus.

I cheat­ed: I put down the first line of the book (impor­tant!) I had thought of a few weeks ago. A good first line is like a key to a lock. It worked. I began to write.

First chap­ter (crude) writ­ten. Okay, the writ­ing feels com­fort­able. Not great, Will be (future tense) a good first chap­ter. But I need to … the fin­gers moved over the key­board well … keep going…

The life of a writer is a mix of love of writ­ing and words, habit, and telling a sto­ry you would like to hear.