Underestimating the Hard Work It Takes to Write a Book

Yep, I'm a member of that club. There are parts of my manuscript that are brilliant. I don't even recognize my own writing! But other parts are making me cringe. Today, it's my transitions. 


My beginning and ending are super strong. My middle sags. It's choppy. I don't know what I'm going to do. Where I'm struggling is figuring out how to traverse 9 months of time without having to go "April" "May" etc.


Today is one of those days I just don't feel like I have enough time to be a writer, Mom, and wife. 


So here's the deal. It's hard to write a book. It is. Plan on hours and hours of agony, frustration, neck pain, eye strain, insecurity, anxiety, jubilation, and mental/physical fatigue. I think what's frustrating me the most right now is some of the recent rumblings about don't publish your first book, have a bunch of books ready before you publish, etc. You know, it's hard enough to find the confidence to even try and publish one book. Maybe these authors with an amazing backlist FORGET their feelings and worries when they were hammering out that first manuscript. 


But I won't throw in the towel. There are some awesome elements of CANCELLED, and it deserves its day in the sun. I don't care if it's not the next Great American Novel. I mean really, what in the hell does that phrase even mean? I hated about 80% of anything on the canon list I had to read for school, so yes, I can safely say, I'm not aiming to be considered great literature. Great literature is boring. You have to write papers about (I know, I did). 


My book is just a fun story, created to give those of us who prefer to not fight our families over the remote control an escape and juicy romantic story. My reader should smile, laugh, get angry, and at the end, want another story of mine to kill a few more hours. 


There, now I feel better. Thanks for reading and listening. :) Time to refuel and get back in there.


"CANCELLED" arriving September 2011. A robotics engineer asks his business partner to marry him, but a previous one-night stand is having his baby.