Question of the day: I have three or four book ideas roaming around in my head.  I try to set a deadline to have a certain amount of pages done by a certain date, because that tends to make me actually sit down and write.  Do you find it better to work on one idea (or book as the case may be) at a time and maybe just keep notes on the other ideas or do you work on multiple ideas simultaneously?  I realize this is probably more a personal preference, but as I've never written a full book I thought a published author's perspective might prove helpful. 

Some authors can juggle manuscripts like playboys do girlfriends, but I am not one of those authors. I am, in keeping with the analogy, a serial monogamist. For me, my protagonist's voice is so important that if I don't give myself the space and concentration to focus solely on that voice, I really lose my way. I struggled with this in the initial drafts of The One That I Want, not because I was working on another manuscript but because I hadn't purged my previous protagonist from my brain, and thus, Tilly, my new heroine, ended up sounding like a weird mash-up of Jillian, my old protagonist, and someone who was trying awfully hard not to sound like my old protagonist. It didn't work at all.

As to whether I keep notes on future projects, the answer to that is also no. To be honest, I swear that when I'm right in the muck of writing a book, I never even think I have another one in me. I always tell myself that this one will be the last because I can't imagine a) coming up with another concept and b) putting myself through this all again! :) So the last thing on my mind is coming up with other ideas. I always feel sort of grateful that I've come up with the one I'm dealing with as it is. THAT said, I do think that a lot of other writers entertain different concepts, and certainly, some writers alternate between manuscripts. I admire the hell out of that, it's just not for me.

If anyone here does juggle, maybe you can post your technique as to how you do so, since I don't think I've been too much of a help in answering this reader's question!

So remember how thrilled I was with my new manuscript and how I was loving every second and how words were flying out of me before I could even think of them? Yes, well, as in most things in life, all good things must come to an end. :)

And so I've reached that inevitable point in the ms in which the writing process has become, well, I suppose "less fun" is a nice way to put it, while "torturous' would be equally appropriate. As the manuscript stands, it's 41k words in - nearly halfway to my end point - and bam - I've hit a wall.

The reason I'm blogging about this isn't to make you feel sorry for me (though you're welcome to, hee!), but rather because I think this is the point at which MANY aspiring novelists also hit walls, and this is also the point at which many people step away from their manuscripts never to return again. In other words, writing half of a book really isn't too difficult. Writing the entire thing - nurturing it in the way it deserves, going back and pulling it apart and putting it back together, trudging on when the going gets tough - is. It is very, very difficult, and overcoming these roadblocks is what often sets published writers apart from unpublished.

So, to that end, I'm spending a lot of time thinking - not writing - but thinking about what I can do to pick the momentum back up. What problems can I create for my heroine? I'm feeling like things have gotten a little stagnant in her world, so what can I do to shake that up? How can I veer her life totally off-course? By doing this, I'm going to be able to create some movement, some quantifiable action that will help get me (and her) back to where I want to be. This is where you have to dig deep, force yourself to keep going even when you feel like hitting your head against a wall. Because this past week, that's what I've wanted to do. (Well, really, what I've wanted to do is spend the day procrastinating by surfing the web from 9-5, but figuratively speaking, I've wanted to bash my head against a wall.) This is the hurdle that I promise you EVERY published writer has had to leap over.

I wasn't expecting this. I was expecting for this book to be 100% smooth sailing, but now that I'm here, I'm realizing that these hurdles are going to make this a better book. I've re-evaluated a plot that I'm going to go back and tweak, I've added in another character to complicate relationships. I'll keep mixing and adding in ingredients until the dish is finished. I'm under contract - I don't have a choice. :) But if you hit this wall, act like you don't have a choice either. It's a lot easier to step away at 40k words and never come back to a manuscript that's giving you problems. Of course, the bigger problem with that is that the manuscript will never be the one that might take you from aspiring to published.

So keep going. I'm going to be doing the same. 

Question of the day: Do you think your last book was more difficult than this book because you were writing a thriller, which was different than what you'd written before? 

Great question - and something I think is very much worth addressing because so many writers struggle with the pressure of writing their follow-up book. I think there are a few reasons The One That I Want was so hard for me. Among them:

1) There is no doubt that the structure of this book was much more complex than anything I'd written before. Whether or not readers realize this, I don't know, but as a writer, it was painfully obvious. My first two books started at point A and ended at point B - even Time of My Life, with its time-jumps. Jillian's flashbacks to her old life (the one she left behind when she traveled into the past) were used in the same way that any memory device would have been used - and really, other than starting the book out in the present, her course was a linear one. The tricky part of The One That I Want is that the plot is less linear, or I should say, Tilly, my protagonist's path, is less linear. I was projecting her into the future, which hadn't yet occurred in the book, and these pieces had to all fall together, much like a puzzle at the end. Which they did. But because I write without a map, I had no idea where or how they were going to fall together, and this proved really difficult for obvious reasons. In hindsight, if I were to ever write a book like this again, I might actually going in with more of a plan - it's too frustrating to attempt a puzzle without every having seen the picture on the cover of the box that you're attempting to rebuild, you know?

2) There is also no doubt - and I know that a lot of writers out there can relate to this - that I felt (and feel) enormous pressure from the success of Time of My Life. Which, I know, sounds silly to complain about! I mean, on what planet does a writer have the right to complain about how well her book did? So don't get me wrong - I AM NOT complaining, but I do feel the need to make my readers happy and I want to exceed their expectations for my work. That's just who I am. I also want to exceed my expectations, and when the bar is that high, well, it's easy to feel paralyzed underneath it. That these two books both deal with magical realism probably made it all the harder for me: I couldn't help but compare the process of writing them both, and that likely just fueled my stress. 

3) I don't think I had Jillian out of my head by the time I started this manuscript. Some of your characters stick with you, even after you've put the book to bed, and she was one of them. So when I started writing TWTIW, I wasn't, in many ways, ready to start writing. The first few drafts just didn't have a clear voice, and that's because I was spending half of my energy detangling Jillian's voice from Tilly's. So, in hindsight, maybe I would have given myself more time to breathe between manuscripts. What's interesting is that I'm not having that problem at all on my current book. As I said, I think sometimes you're willing to lay characters to rest, and sometimes, it's more of a struggle. I was ready to be done with Tilly and move on. I learned my lesson and really feel like I've started this next book from a clear, wiser place.

Authors, I'd love to hear if you've ever had similar struggles - have your follow-up books ever given you difficulty and if so, why?

I don't know if you guys are anything like me, but if you are, then you count pages in your manuscript the way a hallucinating man in the desert counts the last drops of water in his canteen: namely, when I'm writing, it's at least half of what I'm thinking about. I wish it weren't, but man, I want there to be something to show for my blood, sweat and tears, and omg, how horrible is it to feel like you've written an opus for the day, only to highlight that section and see, like, a pitiful, 692 words? (Please tell me I'm not the only one this happens to!)

SO.

I promised that I'd keep you in the loop on my progress of The Memory of Us, and I'm VERY happy to report that I hit 100 pages a few days ago, polished up the draft, and sent it off to my editor for feedback. Woot to the woot!

A few things: I'm trying something a little different with this manuscript - it's told from the viewpoint of several narrators - so now that I have a solid enough chunk down, I want to ensure that it's working. Even if you don't have an editor - if you have a trusted reader or critique group, I think this is a good time in the writing process to step back and see what's meshing and what's not. For me, as I've said before, the first 150 pages are an uphill battle, and then once the foundation of the plots are in place, the rest of it comes much easier. So, knowing this, I wanted to be sure that indeed this is a rock-solid foundation. I also think this is an excellent time to take a deep breath and reread what's down on the page to remind yourself of all the ingredients you threw into the pot. As a pantser, I honestly don't keep track of every little plot point (I should, I know), and as I reread this past week, I was like, "OMG, I'd totally forgotten about that! Let's reference that in the upcoming chapters." In doing so, I can build and build and build, leading up to the end, rather than writing the whole thing, THEN going back and realizing, "Oh crap, I totally spaced on XYZ, and I need to find a way to work that in now."

Another thing I'm thrilled to report is just how much I'm ENJOYING writing this book. I was thinking about this today, how I remember writing blog posts that have said something to the effect that while I love being a writer, I don't necessarily love writing. But the buck has stopped with this book. I truly LOVE writing it! I was chatting with an agent the other night (not mine), and we were agreeing that writers often have emotional cycles in their careers: the high of the first book, the pressure of the second, maybe more pressure with the third, and then eventually (or sometimes with the third book, though in my case, it's the fourth), that gleeful, screw it! feeling - the I'm-writing-because-this-is-so-damn-fun-and-who-care-about-the-rest feeling. It's joyful, it's a blessing. Not every day is wonderful, of course, but all in all, this book just...it just makes me happy. 

So that's where I am in the process. I hope that your writing is proving equally as fulfilling! Anyone ever gone through this cycle? The I hate-it, then I-love it madness? Think this is just part of being a writer?

And I'm not just talking about on American Idol. Today, I'm over on Writer Unboxed talking all about why I think that the voice of your novel and your protagonist is, in my opinion, the most important factor (among many important factors) of your book. As I've noted here, I sincerely and mightily struggled to find the voice of Tilly, the protagonist in The One That I Want, so I share how I eventually (and hopefully) found that voice and why it was so critical that I did.

One thing that I forgot to include in that post is that I think it's really critical to heighten the stakes with your characters' voices. I touched a bit on that, in terms of making them less blah, but when you're writing, ask yourself if this person were your friend, would you actually find them interesting? We all have friends whom we adore but with whom we wouldn't want to spend 300 pages, much less listen to them for 300 pages. This is what you're asking readers to do: listen to your character talk for 300 pages, so make sure that he or she is interesting enough to do just that.

Check it out here - enjoy!