Or so I thought. I started developing this book years ago, after I'd written Arena but before it sold -- during the year and a half that Steve Laube held it, waiting for the right moment to approach the editorial board. He'd said in a seminar at Mt. Hermon that if what you want to write is "C," but the market is at "A," you should write "B," that is, something that incorporates elements of the marketable A, but also the passion of your C.
So, operating on the premise that Arena might not sell, I wanted to develop a book that might be more palatable and yet also be a bridge to Arena. So I came up with Black Box -- an alternate world story set in our own world, but still almost as strange as Arena. I think I worked about 10 months on it before Arena sold. After the sale, Steve wanted to know what I was working on for a follow up but when I ran a brief summary of Box by him he nixxed it in about five minutes (literally).
I figured the Lord wanted me to go in another direction so I dropped it and started developing another novel. After that I went back to Eidon and then the Legends of the Guardian-King series. A year ago January I knew I had to present something new to Bethany House and took up Box again. But this time I had no time to spare, because every day devoted to that was another day away from Return of the Guardian King. I had to take the notes I had and come up with a story synopsis that made sense and was interesting and that's what I did. I also, at what I believe was the Lord's nudging, added a new and unexpected element to the story.
It sold, amazingly, but I was deep into RotGK by then and didn't give it a thought until well... this last month. March 1 I began ferreting out all my old files and notes from their various hiding places, collected them into my office and was completely overwhelmed. I have tentative plot lines, lists of possible events, index cards of notes on background issues, setting details, details of character, more possible events, research snippets, incidents or scenes, writings about where I'm going with the story, what kinds of things I might want to do... stacks and piles and folders.
Plus I have about 8 1/2 chapters written, some of which I like and some of which I don't. And over the course of this very distracted month, every time I came in to wrestle with the alligator, I found myself wanting to read email, or staring out the window, or ...
Well, here's a quote from Overcoming Writing Blocks that describes it quite well:
"The paramount symptom of blocking at this first stage is restless, anxious procrastination. You can think of a thousand things you'd rather be doing than sitting at your desk pushing your pen, and when you do finally force yourself to sit down, dozens of extraneous but apparently urgent thoughts bubble up, as your recalcitrant mind ingeniously struggles to distract itself from the task at hand. Then, when you do finally manage to focus your attention on the job, all you get is a dull blankness, or nothing but the most obvious banal truisms. There's no excitement, no inspiration about the whole project; it leaves a flat sour taste in your mouth."
I had forgotten about this. It is right on. Yesterday, when I had all those hours to really get working on the book, sometime in mid-afternoon I picked up the Robin Hobb book I'd started a couple of weeks ago (Fool's Errand -- it was lying enticingly on the dining room table) just to finish the chapter I was in the middle of... and read almost straight through until midnight (minus time to make dinner and watch 24).
Arg. Not at all part of my plan. When I woke up this morning, I refused to let myself go on the usual guilt trip, realizing instead that this was a familiar pattern. That it wasn't just lack of self-discipline, but that something else was going on. The work I had before me was hard, and the strategies I was using to tackle it were not working. I needed more. And so... back to Overcoming Writing Blocks. Check back tomorrow for the rest of the story...
Karen
