After my last post, in which I sent my book out into the wide world, I basically had a complete meltdown. I like the bubble that surrounds my comfort zone, and I don’t like to stray out of it. Putting something I’ve worked really hard at for close to a year into the hands of others? Not comfortable. Then, because – hey! if you’re gonna do it, do it all the way – I shared it with eight or ten friends.

Cue sleepless nights, disjointed thoughts, jitteriness and physical malaise.

The symptoms aren’t new to me – I’ve suffered from generalized anxiety pretty much my entire life – but I was surprised at how strongly I was affected. I wrote the book because I felt like I had to and I was ready to do it, but my intention was always to try and have it published. I’m not second-guessing that decision at all, but I do need to spend some time on reflection to try and find out what about that step bothers me so much right now.

I hope in a few days things will be back to normal and I can start moving forward again. Until the feedback starts rolling in, I want to start some more detailed planning of the next book in the series and try and flesh out some of the “a bunch of stuff happens” (actual notation) in the middle of my rough outline. I have a few scenes written that need to be organized into that as well. Yeah, that’s right, I’m diving fully into outlining this time around. I pantsed my way through almost all of The Unravelling and when I started I actually only had four or five scenes out of the whole book envisioned. Pretty much the entire thing was “a bunch of stuff happens” in my head until I started writing. Now that I know these characters a bit better, I think I owe it to them to plan stuff out.

And as November 1 approaches I’m SO tempted to do NaNoWriMo again. I managed to win it last year, writing a silly contemporary romance, but this year I’m going to Mexico for a week in the middle of it and I don’t want to spend my time there hunched over my laptop instead of sitting on the beach, nor can I make up the missed days over the rest of the month. All the same, I’d like to start writing the second book (it’s called The Unseeing, by the way, have I mentioned that before?) in earnest sometime in November. I have to do something with my time.

In the meantime this blog is probably going to get quieter and posts less frequent as I’ll have little to say while I’m not actively working on anything. With any luck that will change sometime next month as I get back into the swing of things. My last Six Sentence Sunday from The Unravelling is scheduled for this weekend. Hope you enjoy it!

One last thing: if anyone’s looking to swap novels for critiquing purposes, drop me an email through the Contact page above. I’d love to read what others have been working on, and have my stuff reviewed as well.

Happy writing, everyone. 🙂