Opening day.

That's right, it was today: Day one, chapter one, page one, line one, take one.

I love a good kickoff.

The writing was extremely workaday. The sentences clunked a bit, shuffling forward in stop-start fashion. But those were my characters on that page, picking up the pieces after Book One, and deciding where and how they will start this sequel.

I planted some nice little tension bombs, I pushed my main character into confrontation, I threw in a surprise, and oh, I revenged myself on my own worst-ever piano teacher.

All in a day's work.

Rather amazed that the terror monsters didn't line up for this morning's drafting session. Maybe part of what kept fear at bay was that I focused on telling my own self a story.

Isn't that what we are really doing, when we make anything at all? Don't we make the art we want to see, and write the books we want to read? 

While I hope to goodness that this story entertains other people someday, it starts by entertaining and delighting me. (Though it feels a little self-serving to scribble a sentence that makes me snicker, or to slam-dunk an image that makes me grin at my pens and desk and window, as if they're all applauding.)

And so yes, there is plenty to fix after day one. But there will always be plenty to fix.

So I had a little dance party of one, and I might even have clapped and shouted a bit. Celebrating good beginnings, first days, the first ten pages written, and the realization that:

Before it can be the book a reader can't put down, it has to be the story that I can't put down. The story that grips and energizes me, first of all.

Which means I'm in for a load of fun over the next six weeks. Hard work, and deep crazy fun.

Jiggety jig. (Home again.)

I handed my passport and declaration form to the U.S. Customs officer, and he asked me, "So how do you make a living?"

Which is my favorite question, especially from scary-faced men in super official uniforms. 

I said in a rush, "Well, it's not actually a living, I'm a writer, writing novels, but, yeah, I'm not paid for it or anything. Not published. Still learning. Kind of." 

At which point he scanned my passport and said, "It'll pay off."

He gave my passport back and I took it and sort of floated down the corridor.

It will pay off. The scary man said so. Which is SUPER news since I'm starting a new book on Monday, right? Right.

I met that Customs official on the way back from Bermuda. I spent a week and a half on that tiny island with pink beaches and sharp sunlight and mopeds zipping about and playing card games at night with the doors open so we could hear the waves. 

So good to be away for a while, good to let that to do list shrink and atrophy a bit, right? 

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This is the between week: post-vacation, and pre-drafting. Full of unpacking and laundry and returning emails. All that good catch-up stuff.

But I have to admit, I also envisioned a kind of super-charged version of me, running around on all that vacation energy and mid-Atlantic sunshine, getting some long-neglected projects taken care of before the new project starts...

Instead I'm fighting off the cold that the guy sitting in 11B gave me. (Thanks for that, mister. Three hours of being coughed on? I finally succumbed.)

Spent today in pajamas and my favorite pair of socks (they are ten years old, don't tell anyone), pottering around the house and sneezing. Ruffled my notes for the draft, looked over all those paragraphs hopefully. 

Not so much ultra-productive super-charge super-anything. 

Maybe that's okay. 

I always feel like I should have everything just so before starting a draft. That I should be ready for it, whatever ready means. I'm building an imaginative universe out of my brain on Monday morning at 10 a.m. ... how can anyone be ready enough for that?

Maybe it's better to just drink hot toddies and nap. Because the beauty of the novel and the crazy roller-coaster thrill of writing a new draft... it doesn't come from my having every thing perfectly in place.

It comes from the wildness of inventing something new, day after day after day.

So it's probably fine that I didn't deep clean the closet, clear the junk out of that one corner, or scrub down the bathroom. And whoops about that shopping and errand running I was going to do. 

This baby novel doesn't really depend on the rest of my life running perfectly.

All I actually need is a stack of blank notebooks and a very deep, persistent desire to tell myself a new story. 

And of those two, it's the desire that's more important.

Does that quote give you chills? It does for me. (Or maybe that's being sick. No, no, I think it's the quote.) Tenacity. Even the word sounds tough, full of muscle. 

I have the notebooks. A fresh crop of new pens. And I'm starting to hear my characters around every corner. 

Paper, pens, ideas, and tenacity.

So I guess I'm ready? 

Yeah. Totally. I'm ready.

Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity. -- Louis Pasteur

Let's go get it.

In one week: I start working on the first draft of a new book.

New book. First draft. 

Cue the butterflies in my stomach, performing their usual air-show feats. 

Oh first drafts. So much excitement, so much rush, so many ideas in my mind when I sit down to work, so that I feel like a little god over my fictional universe... and then all the brilliant ideas flee.

Like roaches scattering when the kitchen light turns on. 

And the whole world narrows down to me, and page one.

And I can't always remember why I'm doing this at all. Or where my ideas went. Or why I ever thought they were good. Or if I even have a decent working knowledge of language, period. 

But hey. This is my fifth first-draft-of-a-novel. I know the process.  

And I know that if you want to find those ideas, you might have to get down on your hands and knees and crawl to those hard-to-reach corners. You get to the places with all the lint and dirt and raisins-that-rolled-away and toast fragments and very old cheese crumbs. 

And you find the ideas and drag them out. And put them to work.

So. If, in a week, I start feeling panicky, I'll just remember this brilliant quote from Charles Baudelaire: 

The ideas come when you put your time in. When you show up.

When you get cobwebs in your hair and sweat prickling your scalp and smudges on your knees and goop from who-knows-what on your cheek. 

I know it works.

And it will work this time around too.

Inspiration is to work every day. -- Charles Baudelaire

What to expect when you're expecting a book.

So I'm between projects. 

And in between projects? I forget how to work on projects. Between drafts, I forget how to draft. Between books, I forget just how big and comprehensive a book is.

What do you even call that? Work amnesia? I have work amnesia.

I finished my last draft on the 23rd; I'll be starting my next project's first draft on the 15th. 

Are interims ever comfortable? 

The super-nice thing is that I'll be writing the sequel to the first project. (Ooh! Sequel! I've never done a sequel before. I'm having a writer-geek moment. ... ... ... Okay. Done.)

So even though I'm between projects, the conveyor belt of my imagination is still moving forward, pulling in ideas and images, and treasure-hunting in the attic of all my old unused concepts. 

I'm brushing off my "idea files," which have been passively gathering ideas for years. They're like handy little rain buckets. I've been slowly filling them with ideas for names, characters, situations, settings, and images--all unconnected to any particular project.

So as I get ready for this next book, I'm wading through all those words, pulling out the ones that sound and feel right.

All this to say, it feels mysterious, this part of the process. It makes me jittery, edgy, excited. I've never been pregnant in my body, but I've been pregnant in my mind many times, ready to birth a book. And it's an uncomfortable, nervous, bloated, strange, giddy sort of experience.

Not easy. Not straightforward or simple. Definitely messy.

But it's also one of the reasons why I write. I can never be certain what's going to appear in my mind for a story. Every character, every scene, every story has the capacity to surprise and move me.

Oh the unpredictability. It snags my heart every time.

So I'm getting excited for you, oh sequel of mine. I'm decorating the nursery--ahem, I mean the office. I'm pulling out the colors and characters and ideas that I think you'll like. I'll make all my funny faces at you, and I'll sing you crazy lullabies. And we'll figure this out.

Because we always grow up a bit together, these projects and me.

What about you--what are you up to? What projects are you facing? What's incubating in those sticky, in-between stages of development? Uncertainty loves company: let me know what's up in the comments.

Being scared of the right thing.

A good reminder before Monday comes knocking:

This week, I need to make serious tracks in revising my current work-in-progress. Some scenes just need a bit of tidying, but others... 

Let's just say, there will be a massive amount of re-imagining this week. 

And I can already feel that hovercraft of uncertainty skimming around in my mind. Rewriting is always a tricky business. I know that the old draft needs major reworking, but I'm always sure I'm making things worse. Sucking out the magic of the first draft, and replacing it with ponderous cluttered paragraphs.

Yikes.

But I want to face that head on this week. To risk it. 

I'd always regret it if I didn't tackle this draft. I mean, I freaking love this story. These crazy characters. All the messes they make, the trouble they get into, their narrow escapes. I even love the setting, which is a pretty big deal for me.

And I know I'd regret it if I didn't roll up my sleeves and keep working, until it's as polished and brilliant as I can make it. I need to be motivated by that possible regret. I need to stare down the possibility of failure, until it flinches first.

That's right, story of mine. I'm talking about you. This week, we'll get better together.

Failure is never as frightening as regret. -- Stefan G. Bucher

So how about you? How about your projects? Let's do this together, okay? This week, let's take a plunge. Let's be willing to risk.

The secret.

I caught my foot in another cycle of overthinking this afternoon. Overanalyzing, hyperscheduling, visualizing the worst, overplanning. 

I find myself in these cycles a lot.

So, into that bit of madness, this breath of simplicity:

Because sometimes, that really is all I need to know. 

Sometimes that's the only rule I need to keep.

And sometimes, I need to remember that it can be that simple.

You write by sitting down and writing. -- Bernard Malamud

So speak up.

Here's another reason to write, from Annie Dillard. Because she knows about these things.

Astonishment.

It's like a big bag of caffeine for the heart. 

Dillard's quote here gives me permission to be more aware of it, to track it, to sniff it out. 

What astonishes you? What dazzles and dizzies you? 

I tend to feel it in an instant, a little flash-fire of brilliance in a moment of beauty. This quote makes me want to throw a spotlight on it, and then step into that light. 

I'm new to Instagram, so I've been prowling around among all the photos, all the galleries and feeds. It's like a catalogue of wonder. I'm amazed by the landscapes, the food, art, and people. The perfect summer tomatoes, the mountains reflected on the lake, the kids throwing sand, the dog's patient expression, the frog wide-eyed on a child's palm. 

All the sweet astonishingness of ordinary (and extraordinary) days. 

We all need to be astonished, to move toward it.

And then this: We are meant to give voice to that.

To take the photos, write the poems, spin the stories, and capture the moment in one way or another. All of us, all us makers: that's our job. 

And it is needed. 

You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment. -- Annie Dillard

So what amazes you? What spins your heart around? And how are you giving voice to it? Let me know in the comments.