Thursday, November 7, 2013

The Book Inside Us

There's a book inside us all; whether we wish to admit to it or not.  It doesn't matter what kind of book it is - a fictional book or non-fiction book - it's there waiting to be written, and yet a good percentage of us don't take any steps to write that book from of our lives, of our lives, for our lives or within our lives ever.

However, for the ones who do, it's a life long struggle to get it published... and boy, is it a long struggle!  I have been seriously writing since I was 15 years old and now I'm 40, I've yet to be taken seriously by any publishing house here in Australia.  No agents want me near them, and yet, I have people in America who are offering me agents from Chicago and Boston who want to see my work - if only I had the money to go and see them personally.

And this is a very big problem with writers.

We all have a book - or twenty - inside us; and when we do get in and write that book, edit it, nurture it, love it and watch it mature into what we want it to... then we finally let it go into the hands of some stranger to read it (and I don't mean our friends who are our biggest supporters and First Readers - you guys are fantastic!), it comes back with red pen all over it and a massive fee attached to it!  Yeah, those places where you have to send it before you post it off to a publisher are very brutal; and they cause you to wonder if you've done the right thing in actually writing the piece in the first place.

What I do is write a book.  Simple enough, right?  Wrong!  It's not simple.  I have characters I have to create.  A world to create.  Conflict to throw in there.  A pinch or two of forbidden love, love that's supposed to be there and - hey just for the hell of it - a lover's spat!  And then, there's a lot of action, gunfire, explosions and the ending... and this takes a long time to get to for me.
My current book - 'Fry Nelson - Bounty Hunter' is a 3-book series which is only coming to an end now almost 4 years after I started it.  And Fry Nelson - the character - decided to introduce himself during a war scene in my last major novel of 'Ravenstine Kingdom'... oh, yay, how wonderful was that of him?  Yes, before the last book was anywhere near finished, the next book was demanding to be started... *sigh*... I didn't mind it that I had ideas coming thick and fast, but I did mind it that he just walked in on a medi-evil scene dressed in his modern clothes with sunnies pitched on top of his head and Doc Martens strapped onto his feet.  I had to put him off to one side for a few weeks before I could interview his character for the book.

This doesn't happen very often, but when it does, I have been known to not finish writing a book and just start on the next one.  And this is what happened here, unfortunately.

So, have you had this happen to you?  Have you had that many books going all at once inside you that one took over and the other one/ones suffered?  Or do you tackle one book at a time?  I'm able to write about 3 books at any one time - most times though, I concentrate on one major book and usually have a lighter short story book being worked on the side.  Well, until my next post, happy reading!

3 comments:

  1. Honestly, I swear that I have a book inside me dying to come out... I've been wanting to write a book for the last decade or so... Sure, I've flushed out some ideas for a novel, but have yet to actually start writing one. I keep thinking every year that I'm going to start writing 'my novel', but never start. The idea of writing anything longer than an essay seems overwhelming. I'm not sure where or how to go about writing a novel.

    I've recently purchased some books about writing and discovered a local writing group that meets weekly. I would like to start using the books and the writing group as a resource. I just need to get motivated about writing... I'm not getting any younger, lol! Perhaps, I can start writing something between now and the end of the year and then start meeting with the writing group after the first of the year?? I just need to get motivated to begin writing.

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  2. P. S. I know you mentioned that there are agents in Boston & Chicago who want to see your work. Yes, airfare is expensive. How about using Skype and having a video conference with an agent to discuss your work?

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    1. Woah... I'd love to use skype, but it blows out my computer's hard drive every time. And yeah, I got a new computer but it's got an itty-bitty hard drive of only 1 GIG! How dumb is that?

      So, I'm saving up for a new - bigger - hard drive before I do anything like that. I've already burned through 3 hard drives this year before the warrenty of the HP Pavillion came and went... now it's up to me to get another one. :/

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