Breaking Ground on Book Two

I've survived the torturous process of writing a four hundred page book, rewriting the first four chapters multiple times, doing secondary research to make sure all the titles and details were correct, and editing the hell out of it to check for long sentences (like this one), passive verbs, spelling mistakes, and other grammatical woes. And now I'm kicking off the even more torturous process of sending query letters and hoping that my baby will attract the interest of an agent with a heart of gold who will help me to sell it for the best possible price (which will undoubtedly fail to recover the expenses I incurred by taking six months off, travelling around Europe, and taking the opportunity to buy every British history book I could get my hands on).

So why, after surviving the pain of writing the book and anticipating the pain of trying to sell it, am I even considering getting back on the horse? I know that the horse's saddle is studded with nails and that the horse has a mean temper and a viscious bite. But I can't help myself -- and if nothing else, I'm curious to know what happens with Ferguson and Madeleine as they fall in love. Unfortunately, that book will never come out unless I write it.

Which is how I found myself on my couch yesterday, trying to ignore the nicest weather we've had in San Francisco in a couple of months, setting up my Word program to properly format an as-yet-unwritten manuscript. It was a little bit exciting to go through the process of setting the right margins and ensuring that Word stopped putting 'smart quotes' and 'smart dashes' and other 'smart' formatting that could be bad for manuscript submission down the road. Then I typed the title (currently "Book 2 - Madeleine and Ferguson", although I expect to come up wtih something snappier), and off I went. I ended up writing the whole first chapter, which was around 3000 words, in less than five hours.

While I still have a lot of questions to answer and problems to resolve when it comes to the plot, I have a fairly decent feel for the characters since they were secondary characters in AN INCONVENIENT MARRIAGE, so I don't think I'll go through quite as much trial and error as I did with the last one. Or at least, I hope that's the case -- if I could write for two hours a day (recognizing that that's somewhat impossible but planning to make up for missed workday hours on the weekends), it would take me two months to get to the end of the first draft. That's much better than three years. So even if I fall off the wagon a little bit, I can't imagine this book will take as long as the last one.

And that's where Fate perks up, hears my naive self-confidence, and decides to throw a wrench in things. But I will try to dodge all wrenches and write as scheduled. And if you catch me posting too many procrastinatory links and blogs here, please tell me to stop surfing and start writing.