There are shelves and shelves of books about writing. They tell you how to come up with ideas, develop plot and character, create dialogue and beginnings and ends, query agents and editors. But not about what to do during that queasy, uncomfortable gap between projects.
I’ve always been mortified by this lull. Have I finally run out of stories to tell? Will I die before it ends?
This is how I work. I write frantically. Then I stop and panic because I’m not writing anymore.
It’s been like this for me ever since I began about twenty years ago. My parents had just died, one right after the other. I realized that, since life was short and getting shorter, I ought to start doing what I always wanted to do, write. I was in the car on a long trip, and a story inside my head made me feel like I was going to explode. I located a tablet and a pen—well before the days of laptops and hotspots—and scribbled down the tale of a young girl who freaked out because her mother forced her to kiss her dead grandfather at his funeral. Fifteen hundred words in an hour and a half! Afterwards, I collapsed, the space between my ears empty.
So far, I’ve written four novels. The first one, Glass Hearts, was published in 1999 and won several awards. Recently, I finished Blind Love, a twisty romance involving two interwoven narratives that shift back and forth in time. Talk about empty! My brain is positively hollow.
I remember reading an article in Writer’s Digest once about a woman who filled the time between books by watching a lot of Oprah. I’ve never been fond of talk shows, so I thought I’d try something a little different, and hopefully more productive. I thought I’d write about what life is like when I'm not writing.
I’ve always been mortified by this lull. Have I finally run out of stories to tell? Will I die before it ends?
This is how I work. I write frantically. Then I stop and panic because I’m not writing anymore.
It’s been like this for me ever since I began about twenty years ago. My parents had just died, one right after the other. I realized that, since life was short and getting shorter, I ought to start doing what I always wanted to do, write. I was in the car on a long trip, and a story inside my head made me feel like I was going to explode. I located a tablet and a pen—well before the days of laptops and hotspots—and scribbled down the tale of a young girl who freaked out because her mother forced her to kiss her dead grandfather at his funeral. Fifteen hundred words in an hour and a half! Afterwards, I collapsed, the space between my ears empty.
So far, I’ve written four novels. The first one, Glass Hearts, was published in 1999 and won several awards. Recently, I finished Blind Love, a twisty romance involving two interwoven narratives that shift back and forth in time. Talk about empty! My brain is positively hollow.
I remember reading an article in Writer’s Digest once about a woman who filled the time between books by watching a lot of Oprah. I’ve never been fond of talk shows, so I thought I’d try something a little different, and hopefully more productive. I thought I’d write about what life is like when I'm not writing.
