You plan and prepare and imagine and then one day that future is no longer a small spot on the distant horizon but it's right here and now. This is not to say that my future that I planned for is here - it's not, sigh. But today I felt as though it's almost here. I'm not sure if it's the future I'm planning for even, I just felt that a momentous event is coming, and it's all to do with this book.
This book that I wrote in just under four weeks - 80 000 words in less than four weeks, how driven is that? Is it utter drivel, to be written so quickly? I don't think so. In fact I think it's good, the best thing I've written so far. This book has been coming together in my head since Christmas, and while certainly the threat of complete penury has increased my productivity considerably, I believe I would have written it just as quickly without that threat.
The fact is that I have been writing every day for over a year now and the practice is starting to show. I can write for longer periods, I have a better understanding of how to make every word count and to maintain the story arc and I am a better writer. I think that in future all of my books will be written in this way - circumstances allowing for seven to nine hours of writing time a day of course.
So have I sent it off to agents? No of course not, now it's time to edit and write the synopsis, that dreaded thing that I hate so much. I've just finished my third re-write of the synopsis, and of course there are more to go. I'm excited about this book, I hope I like it just as much when I re-read it in a week or so. I like it so much that I want to send it off to agents right now, even though that would be a very dumb thing to do. I need to polish both the synopsis and the book, but I'm impatient to get it sent off.
I have the tag line, and I have the title. The title is Letters to Myself, and the tag line I'll keep for now in case I change it as the synopsis progresses. This is not paranormal, this book is women's fiction (not a sexist thing to say, it's a genre). It's a kind of anti Fifty Shades of Grey, without giving away too much of the plot. And I'm not saying too much about the plot just in case I read it in a weeks time and decide to have a huge re-write. Once I'm happy with it and it's off to agents I'll let you know more about it.
Once it's sent off I'll be back to writing the prequel for Zora's Dawn. I should have written that first since I have that book finished. If I self published Zora's Dawn before starting on Letters I could be making some of that money that I so desperately need to survive. So why didn't I do it that way?
I don't know if it's just me or if it's all authors, but the writing process for me is a mystery - to me. Letters has been cogitating away in the recesses of my mind for over three months, and Zora's Dawn and the prequel have been in the forefront of my mind. And yet I woke up one day with Letters fully formed in my head and a driving need to get it written down. I started that day and kept on writing until it was finished.
I don't know where any sort of ability comes from - whether it be writing, drawing or designing a house. For me, it just comes. I know I need to write and I sit down and words flow from my fingers. Where do they come from? They stream out of that swirling multicoloured bundle of words in my head. Where does that swirling bundle come from? I have no idea. It's just there, always has been. It drains away when I write, and is back again in the morning. It's so dense that I can't see any but the occasional individual word but they flow from my fingers in rational order onto the screen. When I write with pen and paper it's the same only frustratingly slower.
So here I am, still poorer than a church mouse, as my granny used to say. But today I have the feeling that things are about to change and I don't know how or why. Just that the future, that nebulous thing that we all look towards, has taken a big step closer.
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