I officially finished my first novel in the first week of June. Then took a nice long break, went to Hawaii, fell sick, watched the world cup, generally had a good time. Now it's back to work.
I spent so much time on actually writing the first novel that I forgot the best part about writing a book: starting it. You get to build a world, come up with new characters, new settings. You are not worried about finishing it yet, you are anticipating getting into it. And for the second book, because I finished book 1, I have well defined steps about how I want to proceed.
1. Come up with the whole story- the cast, the settings, the world, everything. Do not start writing a chapter till you know how the entire book begins and ends. This may seem extreme to some, but it worked really well for me. I knew the direction I was going to take and I stuck to it. The end may not have been exactly what I envisioned, but it was close enough. At least there was an end.
2. Not only would I finish a short writeup, but also I would write what I would expect each chapter to contain. No, I don't expect to stay entirely true to this. I will swing wildly apart from this, like someone hanging behind a formula 1 car with a bungee cord, but again this keeps the direction true. I may miss a few chapters, but at the end, I will get back in the general vicinity of where I want to be.
3. Not make the same mistakes I made with book 1. Frankly, between you and me, book 1 sucked. It was really really nothing to write home about. The best thing seems to be that there weren't too many grammatical snafus. Well, one lives and learns.
It's off to book number two. I hope it will turn out better than book number 1. Something I could actually look to publish.
That may or may not happen, but one thing's for sure. The fun I will have writing it is going to be legen..... wait for it......
I spent so much time on actually writing the first novel that I forgot the best part about writing a book: starting it. You get to build a world, come up with new characters, new settings. You are not worried about finishing it yet, you are anticipating getting into it. And for the second book, because I finished book 1, I have well defined steps about how I want to proceed.
1. Come up with the whole story- the cast, the settings, the world, everything. Do not start writing a chapter till you know how the entire book begins and ends. This may seem extreme to some, but it worked really well for me. I knew the direction I was going to take and I stuck to it. The end may not have been exactly what I envisioned, but it was close enough. At least there was an end.
2. Not only would I finish a short writeup, but also I would write what I would expect each chapter to contain. No, I don't expect to stay entirely true to this. I will swing wildly apart from this, like someone hanging behind a formula 1 car with a bungee cord, but again this keeps the direction true. I may miss a few chapters, but at the end, I will get back in the general vicinity of where I want to be.
3. Not make the same mistakes I made with book 1. Frankly, between you and me, book 1 sucked. It was really really nothing to write home about. The best thing seems to be that there weren't too many grammatical snafus. Well, one lives and learns.
It's off to book number two. I hope it will turn out better than book number 1. Something I could actually look to publish.
That may or may not happen, but one thing's for sure. The fun I will have writing it is going to be legen..... wait for it......
