Sunday, February 21, 2010

A specific species of crazy

One particular to authors, I think. I just finished my latest work in progress, Shenandoah (sequel to my short story Dragon's Kiss). As in, just now tonight. Well, mostly finished. I need to think of an actual last line, but hey, in a 70K+ work, I think we can call it done at this point.

This book has kicked my butt all over creation. I am NOT kidding. I've been at this damn thing for months. I don't know why it's been so difficult. There's no one factor to blame, really, just a lot of different things. Lack of time, working in a created future world, having to do a lot of research, the general creativity-killing that comes with stress and overwork. But whatever the reasons, this was a difficult book to write, and it's a relief to have the bulk of it behind me, even if I still have to think up a last line then read through it and do rewrites, smoothing out, etc before turning it in to my editor.

Here's the thing. Here's where the specific species of author-crazy kicks in. I am already all fired up to start on the next one. I have ideas, and I'm excited to work on some of them and see where they go. I want to get to know these new guys and learn their stories. All this, knowing that I'm probably gonna suffer just as much as I did with Shenandoah. If that's not a little twisted, I don't know what is.

2 comments:

Maia Strong said...

I think you may be right, Ally, because I know exactly the sort of crazy you're talking about.

K.A. Mitchell said...

Amen. You are preaching to the choir. Sometimes the carrot of the falling in love with new characters is the only thing that gets me through that last 10K. It's always the mistress and the wife. As soon as you marry the mistress, she turns into your wife.

I love all, though whenever I finish. Even the agonizing months of "will I finish this book before I die." It was all worth it.

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