So I blog as a method of procrastination. Today I’m procrastinating working on my second book, but the purpose of this blog post is to buckle down and rededicate myself to the idea. Last year I buckled down and did something that I thought was unachievable, I wrote a book! I love those words, and I love telling people those words (at least on the internet, I still suffer from imposter syndrome pretty badly and hate saying the words to people in real life).
When I was thinking of writing Blood Foundry I read a tonne of articles on how to be a writer, habit’s of a good writer, thing’s that good writer’s do, pretty much anything to do with writing. There was a pretty solid consensus that the best thing you can do is to write and that once it was written you could make it better. I followed these instructions and wrote a book that I love, I’ve read it far more than I’ve read any other book, as I’ve gone through editing and reediting it. What none of those articles really tell you about is what to do next. I mean the first step is easy, Beta readers. Out of the three people I chose as beta readers only one of them has almost finished the book. I know people are busy and I know the slog that my first draft must be, I also know the need for patience, but I found myself quickly becoming disillusioned with the whole idea of being an author.
The act of writing is fun and cathartic for me. I also write for myself, I write what I would want to read. Having sent my baby out into the world, finding that other people weren’t as invested and interested in it as I was, was devastating. I stopped writing, and then decided that I sucked at that genre and started on a new genre but I kept finding myself pulled back to my original idea. I wrote Blood Foundry, and didn’t realise until I was in the latter part of the book that it was part of a trilogy. I fell in love with the characters I was writing about, but more than that I fell in love with the world I created, and not writing the trilogy feels like orphaning a child.
So this is me rededicating myself to the idea. I’ve begun planning the next novel, I need to set deadlines and stick withe them. I need to finalise my outline by the end of the month and then I need to get back into habits, back to writing regularly.
I love my book, I love the story that I told and I love the stories that I’ve come up with for the Telluric Realm, so even if it doesn’t get read just yet, I’m going to write them, not for my adoring public, but for me.