Hello, World. Remember Me?

What my cat was doing a month ago.

I feel like I've been buried in work, but it hasn't been that long...

Hang on. It's been a month? Okay, I have been buried in work. It was a good time for it. My husband and I had a large setback in a business venture that took the wind out of my sales. On top of that, or because of that, my creativity well was tapped.

What my cat was doing today.

I've been working on my novels, but it's the kind of work that no one can see (not that anyone has seen my books yet, but you will, I promise!). I went through my problematic Book 2 in the Madison Fox series (Book 1 was Conventional Demon, which I submitted for publication the first of this month—still no word from the publisher saying they're in love with it). Book 2 has holes in the plot, and needs corrections to streamline it with changes I made in Book 1.


Since I loved the process of writing Eva and feel I might have finally hit upon a mostly workable Way to Write a Book, I decided to try a reverse-engineer of the process. I created an outline based off Book 2, and the next step is to use the outline to replot the novel, then write. Seeing the whole of a book is a lot easier in outline form than in book form, and I was able to write notes down about specific scene changes as I went.

Of course, given my energy level, available time, goal prioritization, and the general dearth of creativity, rather than jump into that project (or back into fixing Eva), I moved on to The Book That Went Off the Rails, otherwise known as Faye, the book I wrote before Eva. (Yes, even I have a hard time keeping track of what character name defines which book sometimes, and I wrote them, so I don't expect you to keep all this straight. Also, the hidden delight here is that I've written enough novels to sometimes confuse myself.)

It's time to get back to Eva and edits, and I'm ready. I want to show my book to the world!

Oh, and one last thought before I go: We've all heard about the 10,000-hour Rule, right? If not, the rule goes like this: In order to master a craft, you have to put in 10,000 hours of practice. I believe I'm pretty close to 10,000 hours of writing (though I'm not naive enough to say I'm close to mastering the craft). However, it recently occurred to me that I'm several thousand hours from the needed 10,000 when it comes to crafting a novel. Creative writing and crafting a novel are not always the same thing.

For some reason, this made me happy. Maybe it's the fact that I'm getting better. And, every day I work on a novel, even the unseen parts, is chipping away at that 10,000-hour goal.

Finally, this post cheered me as well; even New York Times bestselling authors still have plotting problems. Hopefully I'm getting better at seeing the problems earlier in the process, too!