I'm not sure how much anybody cares to hear about my writing, but it's my blog and I'll talk about writing if I want to. Also, I don't do a whole lot of talking about my writing with anybody (except random outbursts to my parents that make no sense to them, and the occasional in-depth plot outline while talking to a friend on the phone that I make up as I go along), and I'm thinking that maybe talking about it (if only by blog) might make it easier. Might help me figure stuff out.
I sent Book Two to my agent and publisher the other day. I'm very quietly freaking out (but I'm always very quietly freaking out over something or other so this is not particularly new for me). And now - because school is done for the year, and Christmas alone is apparently not stressful enough - I want to start working on Book Three.
And my problem at the moment is that I have two ideas (which I fondly refer to as Potential Book Three and Potential Book Four... they do have temporary titles, but they're so atrociously bad you don't want to hear them). Neither of which I know enough about to start writing, and both that I think are going to be pretty challenging to write (not it-might-kill-me super-challenging, though. Tricky, but manageable). All I know at the moment is pretty much the central characters of each, and the premises. Both are YA, one is paranormal and the other is contemporary, a lot like what I've written before, but about a murder (and every time I try and write a murder it goes pretty terribly. I mean the writing, not the murder. Obviously, murder is terrible).
And Book Two has already so far been pretty difficult. I mean, the manuscript I sent to my agent I wrote over the past six months, but the eight months before that I wrote another book about three times (it was not a good book). I think having a book out made it a lot more difficult for me to write another book to begin with, because I was constantly thinking about what everyone would think and wanting it to be good and please everybody. But over the past few months I've realised that irrespective of what I write, some people will love it but others are going to hate it. The only thing I can really do is try and write the best book I can.
SO! Does anyone have advice/methods for getting from the stage where you have the general idea for a novel to the point where you can actually start writing it? Just start writing and see where it leads me? Try and write an outline? Profile characters? Please help!
