I wrote another book.

Don't laugh.

Almost all the entries about novel writing I've made here have been about I'M ONLY HUMAN, the book I started last year around this time. When I say started, I mean started getting serious. I was about 50 pages in and going nowhere, so I took a writing vacation to Baker City and pushed through the blockage.

I was still struggling with it 8 months later, but finally produced a manuscript.

The book seems to have structural problems I can't quite solve -- the same kind of structural problems as the last book I wrote, 30 years ago. I get an idea, and go back and add it in. Then another idea, and add that. And pretty soon, it's unwieldy.

There are parts I really, really like, but it doesn't quite hold together. It's a clever, high concept sort of book. But it wasn't really written from the heart -- more from the head.

The manuscript has been sitting on my desk for most of the last few months, while I was hoping for a lightning bolt of inspiration about how to fix it. I still think there is a book there. There is a solution.

It was summer, and I was busy anyway.

Not so long ago, I decided that what I really wanted to write was another fantasy. At the time I thought it would be an "epic" fantasy. Fantasy is my natural inclination. I seem to have an aptitude for it.

I wrote the first scene.

Then the next scene came and the next, and then, one night, the plot, the themes, the characters, the background of the whole book came to me.

THE RELUCTANT WIZARD

I realized it was Part One of a young adult series. But was it Part One, or the first book in a three part series?

Dared I take the time to try to write it, when I wasn't finished with the last one? What if it didn't get done, what would that say about my stick-to-it-ness?

I decided to immerse myself in the experience, much like I used to do back when I was writing full time, when I didn't have a job 0r a business or a family.

I decided to write from the heart, from the inside out, and not show it to anyone but just to try to write a 'good' book, one that satisfied me. Every time a doubt would creep in, I'd shunt it aside and say, that has nothing to do with what I'm doing here.

I hinted at what was going on here on this blog, but never talked about it.

I cleared the decks and did nothing but writing, taking days off from work, spending most of every day either thinking about the book, or actually writing the book. It came together with almost no effort, almost as if it already existed.

There are no flashbacks, just a straightforward narrative. Just one viewpoint character, but written third person. No extraneous settings and characters -- it's all set in one place, with the same characters and friends.

I'm in Florence this weekend finishing it.

I had two chapters left to write before I left Bend on Thursday, and they came as easy as the rest of the book. It all seems to hold together, and it seems complete. I spent a day doing some embellishments and additions.

Lo and behold, a book!

Last night, I sat down with a glass of wine and started reading it, as a reader. Burnishing it, and smoothing it as I went along, but mostly just trying to get a sense of whether it flowed. I read 13 out of the 20 chapters.

And I liked it.

Well, I loved it, but I'm still in the honeymoon phase.

Tonight I'm going to read the last 7 chapters, but those are the chapters I worked on last and I already think they are pretty good. The beginnings are always the hardest for me -- later chapters, with the action scenes, are a bit easier, especially if I've prepared properly for them.

By the time I leave Florence tomorrow, I'll be finished.


Now I can let some of the more editorial, critical parts of my brain work on it. But I really don't think I'll be changing much. Linda has read most of it, and she seems to like it. "It's as good as anything you've ever done," was her comment, which might not be the hosanna's I was hoping for, but I'll take it.

At this point, I'm thinking I should dive into Part Two, while I still have this creative delusion going.


It probably doesn't surprise anyone who reads this blog that I can be a prolific writer.