This post is about guts: spilling them, getting them, keeping them.

Writing fiction has its surreal moments. No surprise, right? After all, I'm immersing myself in an alternate reality. If I'm doing my job right, it should leak out and get tangled up in real things.

Today I worked up a nine-page section where my eleven-year-old protagonist is facing the (really really really mean) antagonist. And I have to write both of them. As realistically as I can.

So on the one hand, I'm pulling up as many memories of being scared out of my brain cells as I can remember... What does it feel like, to be paralyzed with panic, but trying to brazen your way out of it anyway? What's it like to be small, and realize that the world is bigger and worser (yes, worser) than you knew? 

And then, I switch sides, and create the most menacing, monstrous, cruel, and unpredictable character I can muster up today. So: it worked. He's awful.

On my writing break, I ran to look at myself in the mirror: checking my face for scales or wicked yellow eyes or... I don't know. VILLAIN TEETH. Because who walks around in society with this kind of thing chuckling away in her head?

The scene itself worked well enough for a first draft. But now I'm a bag of emotions. I have well and completely freaked out my inner eleven-year-old. I want to break into my story and go apologize to everyone. I'm all jittery and anxious.

I can't tell if I need a gin & tonic or a teddy bear. 

Meanwhile, in real life, the business side of my brain has been tallying up my word count each day, looking at where I'm at on my "outline" (can I call it an outline if it's basically blank?), and where I'm hoping to end up.

The good news is that I've cranked out 27,101 words in 12 days, which is none too shabby. That translates to over 72 typed pages, or 106 by hand. (Because I write it first by hand. All part of my plan to burn out my wrists and fingers before I'm 35. Stay tuned on that.) 

72 pages! That's some heft. Send up balloons! Sing songs!

Okay, but the bad news is, that's 12 days out of a scheduled 30, and I'm, um, a fifth the way through my outline. (You can laugh. It really is funny.) 

Do I change the schedule and double my time, or amp up my daily totals, or both, or just let it play out, or ....

Okay. I decided. I want the gin & tonic AND the teddy bear.

And if that all doesn't have me uncertain enough, I'm dreaming up a bunch of big, exciting projects to shape the future of this blog. I hope it will be awesome, I hope it will be fun to follow along. I hope you really like it. 

I also hope I don't pass out from sheer nervousness.

So I made this sign. And I'm gonna plaster it to my forehead.

Or, at least, put it above my desk. 

I need it. My main character needs it. And I thought, heck. Maybe you'd want to see it too.

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It's more than just a nice idea. I've heard over and over again: if you fake fearlessness, you eventually end up ... fearless.

Which sounds like a good direction to go.

And that's what I'm going to be doing around here. 

You too? High five. Let's do it together.

Let's go be brave.

How to keep going.

The first bout of writing momentum has worn off: that first big oomph that carries me over the hurdle of the deaf-and-dumb blank pages, over the hurdle of it's-been-too-long-since-I've-done-this. 

The first few days of a draft are a brass band clanging through the heart, and all the trumpets are blaring, YOU CAN DO IT! 

But now it's week two. I've waded over 13,000 words into this story. And while there's still a fair amount of oompah-oompah going on, I'm also faced with the general suckiness of the first draft.

The characters are first draft characters, which means they are shrill, they don't argue enough with each other (or, terribly, all they do is argue), or sometimes they drop out of the story all together. They move in fits and starts, jerking around, and I get into hovering-author mode, meaning I write breathtaking sequences such as: She stood. She moved near the door. She bit her lip. She sat down again. 

This makes for thrilling fiction.

Not to be outdone, the settings are first draft settings. I've scrounged around in my imagination and come up with a few dusty props: some old trees leftover from a deleted chunk of a different novel; a tent that I imagined up for half a short story a few years ago; and then a weird taxidermy deer that appeared out of nowhere but seemed useful after I brushed off the cobwebs...

In other words, I'm blocking out the story in big broad strokes. The details are pretty darn hazy, which means the writing fills up with adverbs and adjectives: the discount construction paper and paste of the fiction world. 

I begin each session by rereading what I wrote yesterday, which means I'm all grounded in my storyworld again. Yay.

... But which also means that my toes are still curling from the awkward word choice and totally goofy dialogue that came out of no human mouth ever, not for this story or any other. 

I get discouraged, is what I'm saying. 

And I feel very sure that the knack for dishing out good words--if I ever had such a knack--has completely left me. The talent-o-meter readings are negative.

So it's good to remember this quote. (Yes! A quote! You knew where this was going.)

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Well, that is all kinds of cheering.

It's not about busting out beautiful prose on the first try, but more about being so darned stubborn and bullheaded that I will keep practicing, and practicing, and practicing.

Stretch out my toes, from that strenuous toe-curling, and then practice some more. 

It's too easy to take a look at the crappiness of a first draft, sling my desk chair through my computer screen, and decide on another career.

But I think I'll be stubborn. I think I'll keep practicing.

I think I'll stick with this one. 

The most important talent might be the talent for practice itself. -- Atul Gawande

Side effects.

I stare like a lemur at anyone who asks me a question. Confronted by a grocery list, I try to remember the name of something--anything--that I eat. I decide never to leave the house for anything, ever again. I'll just learn to photosynthesize. If I can remember what that means.

... In other words, it's Day Three of the first draft. Of trying to live more in the story than out of it. And it's bringing on all the usual symptoms.

I get a bit dizzy. I put things in the wrong places. I try to make sense when I'm around other people, but what I'm actually thinking about is how the protagonist's aunt manages to bring up three very important bits of information without sounding like blah, blah, blabbity-blah.

Basically I'm trying to get myself to breathe the air of an alternate reality. 

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I love this quote so. 

I'm no opium fiend, I hate injections, and I've never had the slightest desire to inhale smoke of any sort. But I have been deeply and persistently and unshakably bookdrunk, for days on end. 

And right now, I'm pretty much tumbling back down that rabbit hole. 

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. -- Rudyard Kipling

(I heard what you said.)

They were around the corner, talking at normal level as I sat there.

And then he came back and said, "I know you're a nice person. So you didn't eavesdrop."

I gave a panicked grin.

Because while I'm a nice(ish) person, I am trying to be an excellent writer.

So I absolutely eavesdropped.

(They were only talking about giving up cheese, anyway.)

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.

You had me at September.

Oh my gosh. It's finally September.

I belong to that group that counts autumn as their favorite season. I always wish that it were one of the longer seasons... instead of a little blip between sweating and shivering. But I'll celebrate every day of it as soon as it's here!

To be honest, September usually runs pretty warm: we're basically in the upper 70s til October. Seriously. That should not be. 

Summer just hangs on around here. I start getting that itchy feeling you get when you're trapped in a corner talking to someone that mayyyyybe you're ready to be done talking to? That anxious sort of uh-huh-uh-huh-I-really-need-to-move-on-now head nod and wincing grin? 

Yeah, summer. That's what I'm doing. Time to move on.

I'm edging toward fall, as best I can. It's still gonna be awhile before I can get away with wearing an alpaca scarf (rats!), but until then, here's a not-at-all complete list of everything I'll be embracing this autumn:

1. apple cider

2. sweaters!

3. and, of course, scarves, alpaca or otherwise

4. rainy days

5. knitting!! okay, crocheting, you too. Let's get granny-squaring.

6. curling up with an Agatha Christie mystery

7. (or really, any mystery at all)

8. watching college football with the fam... yelling at the TV has its therapeutic effect.

9. long walks in our neighborhood with cooler weather... no more sweating!

10. frost

11. watching our sweet gum turn every possible color... 

12. bringing out all the wintery afghans

13. that long-division, back-to-school feel in the air makes me feel vicariously industrious

14. have I mentioned knitting??

15. pumpkin EVERYTHING... doughnuts, bread, cookies, pie, mashed potatoes (really!), and of course,

16. the fall coffee drinks. YES. Yes I would like extra cinnamon on top, thank you.

17. also? MAPLE. 

18. the sounds of leaves crunching underfoot

19. boots!!

20. kettle corn

21. visiting the local apple orchards... the dizzying scent of sun on ripe apples, mmmmmm...

22. all those fall pies, baby. Pear-Fig-Hazelnut, Cranberry-Pear, Caramel-Apple, Pecan...

23. did I mention rainy days?? My heart lifts off every time it rains. 

24. the sounds of our high school marching band, practicing across town... so many memories!

25. sitting around a bonfire with friends, under a cool night sky

26. and oh, it's comfort food season again! (Basically everything that happens in an autumn kitchen: I adore.)

27. time to rewatch Anne of Green Gables, am I right?

28. and a host of other fall movies... Fantastic Mr. Fox and Moonrise Kingdom come to mind. Oh! And the spooky Tim Burton flicks. (Corpse Bride, anyone?) 

29. the sound of the wind in the pine trees by my window... oh, the blustery days of autumn!

30. caramel apples?? Caramel apples. 

31. and time to start scheming for Christmas! (Did I actually say that.)

... Well that was stupid. Now I'm practically hyperventilating, and it's still suffocating summer-mode outside. 

Sigh.

Help me wait by sharing some autumn love! What are you excited about?? Tell me what's on your list in the comments.