Writing the Next Book
By Barbara O'Neal | June 26, 2019 |
As a career writer with many books under my belt, one of the eternal struggles is letting go of the book that’s finished to move on to the one that isn’t.
It’s a challenge every single time—going from working on a book that’s now been through untold numbers of drafts, then developmental editing (three round), line editing, copy editing, proofreading, where each time it’s been polished a little more and a little more, and all the bits shine and intwine in just the right way, to …
The Mess.
The Mess is the raw material of the next book that the girls in the basement have handed up to me in a big bucket. It’s not at all polished; in fact, it’s the opposite of polished. It’s full of repetitive words and information and clumsy descriptions and “you know, Jane” dialogue. The theme is misshapen and overtly obvious and I certainly couldn’t go into a store and buy anything as one of these characters.
Because it’s not time yet.
I’m right there with the Mess right now. I’m only a quarter of the way in, and until I hit that magical 30-35,000 words, I’m always feeling my way. What does this character think? Why did I layer in that business about toads? Until I can walk around within the world I’ve created, in the skin of the people who are telling the story (I almost wrote, the characters I’ve created, but hahahaha. I did not create them. They created themselves and then auditioned), I’m a little lost.
But the real problem is the nagging little voice that keeps saying in its sour way, “Well, this is nothing like When We Believed in Mermaids, is it?”
It’s really, really not. I am not sure exactly what it is, but I can tell you it’s not Mermaids.
Mermaids is the book that’s coming out in just three weeks. When I sat down to write it, I had just finished a gift book, The Art of Inheriting Secrets, which was a bit of a departure for me, with a puzzle at the heart of the book and an English setting. I’d just moved to a new publisher, Lake Union, and I had new everything. New editor, new systems, new ways of doing things. I adored the book and everything about it, as one does with a gift book that simply lands in one’s lap and begs to be written.
Yes, ok, I’ll do that.
When We Were Mermaids was most adamantly not a gift book. It was a challenge technically, with dual narrators and dual time lines that required switches back and forth between present tense to past tense. (Yes, there are reasons—I didn’t make that hard choice on a whim. It solves a story problem, which is how to keep the reader oriented in time and place.) I had to do a lot of research on events in the timelines, on various occupations and hobbies, on all kinds of things. A very important secondary character proved to be slippery and hard to know, while the main narrator was so unlike me—an ER doctor, a seriously athletic surfer, aloof—that it took a lot of time to find my way into her skin.
It made me work, that book. Work really, really hard. I then worked with an editor who pushed me harder and deeper than I think I’ve ever gone, and worked hard some more.
In the end, I fell in love with Kit as much as any character I’ve ever written. It’s also, without a doubt, one of my strongest books, at least in my opinion. Early reads seem to say the same thing, and I’m excited for it to arrive in the world.
But you know, here I am again, with a Mess on my hands. An unpolished pile of ideas and words that is still blurry to me. There’s a skein of green silk and unspun wool, and hares, and the coast of Devon, where I spent a magical week last month to do some research. It’s nothing like Mermaids, or the book before it.
Which is as it should be. No book is like any other, just as no two children, even from the same parents, even twins, are not like any other. They may share the DNA of my voice, and the themes and issues I seem to need to write (mothers and daughters, sisters, how some people survive terrible things and other people can’t), and a certain tone or spirit, just as our children might all have blue eyes or long fingers.
To write new work over and over, one of the great tricks is mastering this process of letting go and starting afresh. It’s hard to let go of a book you’ve fallen in love with, a world you know intimately and have painstakingly built, detail by detail. It’s that much worse if you’ve been writing it for years, or even decades.
It still must be done. This week, I’ve given myself some time to really let go of Mermaids, as if I’m sending a child out into the world. She was very dear to me, and I learned a lot about myself, and I am honored that she chose me to be her facilitator. It’s time to let her find her place in the world, offer her gifts to the people who need them, take flight.
And I must shut the door and go within and day by day sort through the silk and the wool and the hares and the crashing of waves against the cliffs and listen to these people and hear what they have to say and be as faithful as I can to committing their stories to the page. And a year from now, I’ll be mourning the requirement to part with it, and it will almost certainly be my favorite, and I’ll be staring at a big basket of stuff that I’ve been handed by the girls in the basement.
Again, I will begin.
Do you have trouble letting go of one book to start the next? Have you ever been stuck between books? Which phase of the book is your favorite?
Photo by Ferran Feixas on Unsplash
[coffee]
Barbara O’Neal is the author of more than a dozen award-winning, bestselling novels, including the runaway bestseller, When We Believed in Mermaids, which has been published in more than 20 countries and spent many months on the Amazon Charts, as well as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Washington Post bestseller lists. Barbara lives on the beach in rugged Oregon with her husband, a British endurance athlete who vows he’ll never lose his accent and their zoo of cats and dogs. You can find more information on her newsletter and where to find her on social media at barbaraoneal.com.
Writing’s a grim business. You spend months getting to know people inside and out, and all the while you know one day you’ll have to bury them.
Oh, that’s grim indeed! :)
Ugh, yes! I have so much trouble starting, and while I’m so excited to finally be done with the last book, I can’t seem to figure out where to start this new one. It’s a new genre, and new characters and new, reality based setting (meaning no making up stuff just because I want to.) I have lots to learn and part of me wants to just write and the other part goes, “But what are we supposed to write? Each book seems to start off a bigger mess than the last. I’m devolving from my organized, plotter ways! I’ve decided to just take a legal pad, stick (literally) everything I have developed so far on bits of paper and random notebook pages on it, and just write stream of consciousness for a while. Eventually I’m hoping it will become enough to organize into a working document. If I don’t, I’m going to get stuck and not write again. It’s kind of scary for a Type A personality, but the last thing I want is to get paralyzed not writing again! Watch out mess, here I come!
I love the legal pad answer to everything. I have one by my computer right now. It’s invaluable at the start, when I’m noodling, and I love it even more when I need to make scene lists that show this or show that. I can do that in Scrivener, but it somehow feels more organic and manageable on the tablet.
Good luck!
Oh my, do I feel this acutely this year, a year when I debuted AND have a second book coming out in just 69 days (ohmygoshisitthatsoon?), a year when I also polished a third manuscript I’d been working on for a few years AND started a new one (52,000 words in) with a January deadline. They are all elbowing each other in my very crowded brain.
As long as I keep getting requests from book clubs and getting notes from readers of the first one, I can’t completely let it go. And yet I am ready to move on and the PR requests for the next one are coming in. I really need to concentrate on book 3 (the one I’m currently writing) but the other, which I hope will be book 4 is, I think, the best of the bunch and I can’t get it off my mind either. And then there are all those ideas that keep coming to me for other books as well…
Readers talk about book hangovers, but I don’t think those are reserved for readers alone!
So true that book hangovers plague writers, too. You have a lot of juggling going on there!
Barbara,
to mix all kinds of metaphors and God-knows-what, may MERMAIDS fly into a bright orbit and may the MESS step past its temerity to show it isn’t one.
What a lovely stew of wishes. Thanks, Tom.
I appreciate someone as experienced as yourself sharing that it doesn’t get easier and that the problem I’m having starting the second book is tied to my reluctance to let the first one go — since it’s not yet published, I will get to live with it for a while longer but I know that while I’m waiting, I need to start the next which is niggling in my brain but not down on paper. You’re a great teacher and an inspiration, Barbara, — in fact, the idea for my second book owes a debt to you from the last Unboxed Conference in 2016- something you said sparked an idea that I hope will result in a great psychological suspense book in the next year. Best of luck with Mermaids – it sounds great!
Maggie, I can’t think of anything better than knowing I helped spark a new book! Whoo hoo! Wishing you so much good luck.
And it is really important to finish a book, then send it on it’s way or out into the world however you can, and then work on the next book. It’s how we build the body of work, and not end up being a person who wants to go buy an “author outfit” rather than dig into the hard stuff of the next work.
I get attached to my characters, some books more than others. But I guess when the spark for that new book catches, I’m off and running, saying farewell to those I loved. And still love. Great post. Can I ask, what book of yours might explore the theme you mentioned – why some people survive terrible things and others can’t. You’ve piqued my interest. I look forward to reading your new release in a few weeks.
When it comes to tackling a new story, I need to embrace the chaos more. Whenever I start a new project, I keep trying to perfect the early chapters when I should be accepting the messy parts and discovering what they can reveal. The trouble is that some of this lingering over a novel’s opening seems necessary because I can’t move forward at all if I’m in complete darkness. Great essay, Barbara!
Lordy. There right now, with my 10th book just out, the next under contract The Mess on my desk, a departure novel “resting” before getting a final read and going to my agent, and a new proposal circulating. So reassuring to know you experience the same crazy muddle of emotions at this stage!
Barbara, you address these issues (pre-pre book, beginning book, mid-book, finishing book, post-book, post-post-book-begin-again book) so well, with so much fun in language, with the Mess and “the girls in the basement,” and more. Thank you for the pleasure.
My current tendency is “duck the simmering Mess and turn to a mess gone cold”—I have been playing with a sequel to a collaborative novel, but my playing has merely been to comment on (and then fend off) the starts my collaborator has written, saying I just don’t feel it yet.
But to make myself feel busy, I just today finished a web-covered book proposal for a memoir of my extensive shoplifting years as a corrupt youth. (Don’t worry, I only steal phrases now.) So, I didn’t tidy the Mess, but did get an incentive from it.
I’m confident you’ll put those silk skeins, and the wool and the hares and the crashing of waves in the order they’re meant to be. And then you’ll undoubtedly be on to the next Mess, as it should be. Do enjoy the ride.
Yes, one should enjoy the ride.
Ooo, skeins of silk! And wool! I love wool…
My favourite part of the writing process is what I call noodling – rolling around the germ of the idea and letting it gather material like a snowball. After that, it’s less play and more work (and the closer it gets to publication the more work it is, being self-published).
I’m currently in the rewrite phase of book #2, being overwhelmed at how much needs fixing. But it’s not going to fix itself – the only way out is through.
I appreciate your story so much and have a newfound way of getting over my first book and moving onto the second. I always have this habit of starting new books and not being able to finish old ones, but I think if I finish one completely then I will be able to let go and be fresh.
Yes, finishing, doing that last bit, can be so challenging, but in the end, that’s what teaches us….how to end. A new book always stands on the sidelines, flashing her legs, trying to get your attention, but she’ll be just as tricky.
Good luck finishing!
Thank you for this lovely reflection on moving between books. I find myself missing characters in books I finish like good friends I had been seeing daily and moved away from. I’m coming to the end of a trilogy right now and am already pre-missing the characters I know I’ll be parting from soon!
This is almost exactly where I am right now, caught between edits to the book publishing next year and the Mess inside my head that someday, with luck (maybe even next year as well) will be hammered into a story. Thanks for reminding me it’s all part of the process, and good luck with Mermaids launch!