Professional Writing

I don't know how professionals do it.  What with contracts and deadlines, how can they meet the demands placed on their talent and skills?  If I had had someone breathing down my neck telling me when the next book is due, I don't know if I could do it.  But then again, I am not a professional (not yet anyway, I'm keeping my fingers crossed).  I have stated in previous posts that I have been working on my book Is This Forever?  Knights of Erisod Book One, and that I had actually completed most of the major editing done on it.  Well, I have printed out a copy of the 345 page book for a friend of mine who said that she would like to read it.  Bad idea.

     It's not that she doesn't like it, she does.  And she has almost finished it.  No the problem likes in the fact that it is book one.  She wants to be able to read book two now.  After I finished the first book at the end of my freshman year I did begin working on a second.  It has a grand total of eight pages.  I kind of hit a wall.  I know how I want the story to end, which is good, but I don't know how I want the story to get to the end.  I have another friend who's told me that she wants me to work on the last book next because she wants to know the ending.  Chenin is part of the Pen & Ink Society along with me and she was in my Advanced Creative Writing class last fall.  She along with our friend Logan helped me work on revising three chapters of my book.  So she has a lot of information about secrets and places where I want to take the series.  So she is demanding that I work on that.  It doesn't help that my sister agrees because Elizabeth reads the end of a story first.

     That is a habit that I abhor.  Yes, I have done it myself because there are some books you read that you wonder if you wish to continue.  Sometimes peaking ahead at the ending makes you want to continue in order to see how they got to that surprising conclusion.  However, I try to read the book all the way through without peaking.  I agree with Luke Wilson in Alex and Emma that I hate it when people base a book necessarily on the ending.  The conclusion should remain a surprise, but many people don't believe that, which does suck.

     Besides my friend Nikki wanting me to work on the sequel so she doesn't have to wait around forever wondering what's going to happen, and my friend Chenin demanding I work on the last book to see how it all ends, I have my sister (who agreed with Chenin on the last book point) pushing me to finish her book.  And when I give her ownership, I do not imply that I am reading anything she wrote nor am I saying that I am writing a book for her to pass off as her own.  No, when I say it is her book, I mean it is because she is pushing me to finish writing it.  Football High is actually the first book that i ever started writing.  Even before Is This Forever.  However, I have this horrible tendency to start writing something and then leaving it for something else.  Well, Football High, like Is This Forever has been lost.  But unlike my newly edited book, this book has been lost three or four times.  Yes I know.  I have been berated by people telling me I need to learn to back things up.  Well, I have started doing that, a little late in some cases, but I have learned my lesson from cruel experience.

     After losing Football High that many times, it is hard to start over, but start over I have.  See the only problem is that I now have no idea what in the world to do with the story.  I know what the plan is in my head, but I seem to be hitting nothing but dead ends and road blocks.  Actually this is a great problem of mine.  How in the world do I get from point A to point B?  I have the beginning, I know the ending.  It's that pesky middle that kills me every time.  Well, I told Elizabeth yesterday that I don't know if I can finish her story and she told me that I had no choice.  It is the ONLY book of mine that she had ever started reading.  She's been hooked by the plot and demands that  I finish it . . . otherwise she will hurt me.  Ah, older siblings, how sweet.

     To top off the problem of these three demands by two friends and my sister, I have another little problem.  Me.  It's not that I don't want to work on those books, it's just that I have several started and even more in a little folder of things I would someday like to write.  There was this one episode of "Numb3rs" where Charlie tells Don that he can't choose what he works on, it's just whatever's in his head.  Well, that's kind of how it is for me.  I worked on Is This Forever? when it was in my head, same goes for Football High, and Centuries of Chaos: Knights of Erisod Book Two, however they are not the stories running around in my head right now.  Currently I have the plots of Carry Me Home (a vampire and angel novel), A Blue Storm Comes (a preternatural creature nevel), and finally Adaptations (an X-Men like mutation novel (while not pertaining to X-Men at all :P)).  With these swirling around in my brain demanding attention, I don't know what to do.  I don't know how to shut if off.

     That's why I wonder how professionals do it.  But I have decided to set some goals for myself.  I will try to pound out a chapter a day to either Football High, Centuries of Chaos, or A Blue Storm Comes.  I need to become more diligent in my writing.  This is a difficult task though, considering that school is starting in nineteen days.  We shall see what comes of this all.