June 1, 2022
Week 86
Emotional State: Gloriously Grateful
Books
I’ve finished writing the cozy mystery. It’s done, finito, complete (until editing). I set it aside and went back to work on Book Two, getting rid of clutch words, moving content around (again, I know), and generally setting my editor up for better success with it than the mess it was a few days ago.
I’m not done with it – I’ve still got 698 instances of ‘was’ to check (soooo many) – plus a few other words I use a lot. I really like ‘just’, ‘door’, ‘head’, ‘hands’, and ‘before’. I had more telling than I expected – I thought my show game had leveled up. It had, but only to beginner level 2 instead of the mid-range I thought it was. But it’s all good. It’s part of the process.
I had expected to be further along in the process, though, based on the three, was it four?, rounds of edits I’ve done, but it is what it is. I’m working with what I created – a messy, confusing pile of words and actions that will (I promise) get to a good second book. Because if you’ve not heard me say it a thousand times, you want to get to Book Three.
But I don’t want to take away from the beautiful disaster that is Book Two. It has just as much right to be read as Book Three, if only because I struggled with it so much. It’s good too, in a different way. I may feel publishing this one more because of how much I wrestled the ideas in it to the ground. The book will not win, the reader will.
Or maybe not.
I had an epiphany the other day. I started my writing journey in October 2020 after 35 years of not writing. In under a year, I wrote and published my debut novel. That was a feat in itself and I celebrated.
The bug bit me, though, and I wanted to keep writing. So I did. As of last week, I’ve written four complete novels (over 300,000 words) and two novellas. If you break it down, it took me ten months to write my first book, and nine months to write five more. FIVE MORE. Okay, so two are shorter, by 60,000 words each, but I still wrote them.
I was so focused on my backlist and my schedule, that I failed to stop and appreciate what I’ve accomplished. If you add in the book reviews, blog posts on Medium (which are paying for themselves), marketing, and other writing I’ve done, I’ve achieved a lot.
Like, a lot a lot.
And I have loads more to go. By this time next year, the plan is to have three of the Space Between books and three of the Merryton Mews (TBD if the name sticks) cozy books published, plus three reader magnets ready to give away.
I also plan to have written one more cozy, an In-Between novella for the Space Between series (historical fantasy so that Angwyndith gets her own book(s)), and the next cozy book in the series in progress. I don’t start hammering away at the next Space Between books until June 2023, but by August 2023, the plan is to all three books in the next mini trilogy drafted. I also have plans for at least twelve additional Medium posts (they count because I’m wordy), and any number of book reviews done.
Two years after I published my first book, I’ll have written ten full-sized novels (60k+) and four novellas of varying length. That’s fifteen books in three years. And I thought writing two a year was daunting!
The writing bug has bitten me. I only hope the momentum keeps going and I figure out what happens next in both of my series. And that I’ll be living off my royalties so that I can do this full time and write – you guessed it – even more.
I love my life. I’m grateful for so much it makes me teary eyed. Is it perfect? No. Am I stretched thin between freelance gigs, life and hobbies? Yes.
But it’s glorious all the same.