I'm
starting an ABC Challenge today and I will continue for 26 days in
April. Some posts will be articles, others will be quotes from books.
Who knows where this will take me? I think this is going to be a lot
of fun. Look for it every day as of midnight Eastern time. My regularly scheduled Tuesday posts will resume Tuesday, April 27.
Are You Still Writing Your Book?
There
are a variety of ways to answer this. Some of them are actually
polite. I have to remind myself that most people don't know what is
necessary to write a book. They have no concept of how long it takes,
but have some nebulous feeling that it should take a while.
For some books, this is true. For others, not to much.
Non-writers
(and some authors) have no idea that I work on anywhere from two to
ten novels at once, bouncing back and forth like a March Hare on
speed—400 words here, 1,000 there, until a book is complete. If the
mood strikes and the muse cooperates, I can finish a book in as
little as four days. Yes, I have done it—twice!
While
it's lovely that they remember that I write, it's hard to explain
that I have no idea what book I was working on the last time I spoke
to them, especially if it's been a few weeks.
I
try to be polite and say, “What was I working on when we last
spoke?” If they remember, I can tell them the progress I've made.
Other times, I don't bother, I just say, “Yes.” Then there are
the times I feel like being snarky (usually depends on the person
asking me) and I come up with a variety of snotty comments.
“Are
you still writing your book?”
“No,
I gave that up for Lent.”
“Are
you still writing your book?”
“I
was, but I was attacked by pirates and they stole it.”
“Are
you still writing your book?”
“Yes.”
I
suppose that the last isn't so much snarky as it is definitive.
Whatever book I'm working on, I'm still writing it. (Unless I just
finished it, they I will say so.)
Not
even my family knows how many books I've written. I used to try to
talk over plots with my husband. He, kindly, asked more than once,
“What are you working on?” He quit doing that after I gave him a
twenty minute discourse on the plot of some book he had no idea I was
even working on. It was complicated and his poor, tired brain
couldn't handle my high speed dissertation. Poor darling.
He
does laugh when I tell him I have a new idea for a book. He's even
asked me, “How many is it this time?” Laughter increases when he
hears the staggering number has increased by one.
I
am proud to day that I managed to reduce the number last year and I
am still two behind on the unfinished vs. finished. I had set myself
a goal in 2015 of finishing a book a month. So far, I haven't done
that. Instead, I started three new ones. I attribute that to being
somewhat tired of my other books. I needed greener pastures. However,
the goal of finishing a book a month is still in my mind. We'll see!
In
the meantime, I'll stop babbling on about this and let you go about
your day in peace. Please come back tomorrow for Letter B, an excerpt
from one of my books beginning with a B!
©
Dellani Oakes 2015
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