The Slog

There is a reason why most writers don't keep a blog while they're in the process of writing a book. Neil Gaiman said it best when he explained the reasoning behind starting a blog after his novel, American Gods, was finished:

"It was a bit like wrestling a bear. Some days I was on top. Most days, the bear was on top. So you missed watching an author staring in bafflement as the manuscript got longer and longer, and the deadlines flew about like dry leaves in a gale, and the book remained unfinished."

Boy, do I know the feeling, Neil.

I've set myself a quasi-impossible goal for Seaquel. I turn 21 in 22 days; I want to finish Seaquel on September 8th, so I get to brag about how I wrote three novels before I turned 21. Is that greedy? I can already say I wrote two novels before I turned 20. Let's round it off with three before 21.

Of course, that means I have 22 days to write the last third of Seaquel. It's not impossible. I wrote the second half of Seafear in three weeks, in a fit of creative energy. I wrote 100 pages of Seaquel in about three days last month. It can be done, and now's the best time for that -- I don't have school until September 1, and unless I get a phone call in the next few weeks from one of the jobs I applied for, I'll be completely free.

Right now I'm being dogged by the existential questions I assume every other unpublished writer deals with: Is this really what I'm meant to do? How do I know this book is good enough? I submitted my 28th query letter tonight, so I now have six agents from whom I'm waiting to hear. I'm 300 pages into the sequel of a book for which I haven't yet found representation; it could all end up being a monumental waste of time.

Except it's not, because I'm not doing it, in the long run, to get published. Yes, it's been a dream of mine for as long as I can remember to pull my own books off the shelf at a bookstore, to be a published author, to have readers -- God, I can't even attract readers to my blog, how can I get people reading my book? -- and to have a fancy-dancy author website. Every time I go into a bookstore, I find myself wandering over to the YA section, spotting the "Smiths," and looking for where my books could one day be. But I'm not doing it for that; I'm doing it because I love to tell stories, and I love to write, and this is a story that I very much want to tell.

It's a slog, and it's hard to explain to people who aren't writers. I sound crazy when I talk about it to my friends now: "Oh no, I'm not a published writer at all, I don't have representation. What's that? Yes, this will be the third book I've written." And good God, a lot of people don't even like to read. When I'm meeting new people with my best friend, and the topic of hobbies comes up, I say I like to write and that I've written two books; he says he break dances. Everyone thinks his hobby is cooler. I can't even get my own parents to read my book, but for some reason, I keep on doing it. I write, and I keep on trying to get published. I try my damndest, because I can't not write.

I don't know if that makes me stupid or if it makes me admirable. There's a fine line between the two.