Finding the Sweet Spot; or How to Rediscover the Joy in Writing

For most fiction writers, creating stories is a passion, something they would do whether or not they had any hope of being published. In fact, when I reflect on my writing life so far, it’s those years before I was published—when I was striving for truth, daydreaming about characters, building story arcs, experimenting with language—that were the most exciting and rewarding for me. And I think it’s because that time truly belonged to me. It was my choice whether to spend an hour of the day writing or seven. My choice to try my hand at contemporary or magical realism, women’s fiction or young adult. It felt like I was in a giant sandbox of imagination playing with dozens of toys. And best of all, no one was watching.

Now that I’m published and contracted, those toys have become tools, and that sandbox has become a workshop, one with glass windows through which any number of people can peer in and pass judgment. And my time no longer belongs to me. Now I’m in the business of creating a product, and people are waiting on the sidelines to judge what I’ve created. Somewhere along the line, I stopped playing because of those eyes on me, because of the voices seeping through the windows telling me that what I was making looked wonky and strange, that it was neither functional nor beautiful.

And then those voices became so loud that I stopped listening to the most important voice of all—my own—the one that was trying to tell its next story.

So how do I find my voice again when all those other voices are shouting at me? How do I find the joy in writing when it feels like a job? How do I get myself back into the sandbox?

A writer friend of mine gave me a great sports analogy that has helped me immensely. She said that when she's playing tennis, occasionally the ball hits her racket so soundly that she can feel the impact of it in her bones. That satisfying feeling travels all through her body, telling her she's made perfect contact, that she's hit the “sweet spot.”

When I told her how I'd been feeling lately, she reminded me that when you’re writing freely and tapping into that reservoir of imagination and possibility, you can find that “sweet spot”in writing too, that place where you know instinctively that you've hit on a truth, made a connection, done something well. If you can somehow immerse yourself in the game and play like no one's watching, then the words will come pouring forth and it will feel like magic. Like joy. 

The Aftermath of a Book Launch

So you’ve written a book and snagged an agent who sold your book to a publisher who helped you revise and copyedit and promote, and now three years later, you have an actual book in the world! Most people might assume that after this long roller coaster of a journey, the writer can finally breathe a sigh of relief and just coast. But in my experience, this is just the beginning of another roller coaster, much shorter in length but with the same amount of ups and downs--the post-launch.

The first “up” in my post-launch rollercoaster was my launch party held at The Doylestown Bookshop last Saturday. I debated whether to have a launch party at all—I’m not one for being the center of attention—but I would encourage anyone with a debut coming out to have one, if only to remind yourself that you have accomplished something that the rest of the world sees as kind of awesome. It was so wonderful to have friends, family, and even some of my students come out to support me, to chat and sign, eat scones and drink wine, and basically just celebrate with the people I love. Major, major high point! A huge thank you to all who ventured out on that rainy day to help me celebrate; it was amazing!

And now for the “lows.” I’m sure there are many writers who navigated this post-launch terrain with more perspective and maturity than I did, but I also know I am not alone in becoming a dysfunctional mess of a human being during the first week after my launch. It wasn’t helped by the fact that I was on spring break; if I’d been teaching I would have had more distractions. But right after my book released, my world suddenly became very small, a bubble of minutiae that no one else really cares or knows about but that can become all consuming for the writer.

I’m talking about the internet, of course. Every morning I would hop on the computer to see if my Amazon ranking had gone down or if my Goodreads ratings had gone up (and then cry when I realized the opposite had happened). I obsessed about sales and reviews and blog comments, hoping that my little book was thriving out there but knowing that, for the first time in this entire process, I couldn’t do a single thing about it.

Because once a book releases, it’s no longer yours. Unlike the end of a pregnancy when a woman gives birth and has an actual baby to take care of, a book is immediately out of your hands, for better or for worse, and the only thing the writer can do is wish it well and get started on the next project.

I am happy to say that now, two weeks after my release, I have returned to the land of the living. This past weekend I threw myself into revisions on Book 2, and today I head back to school. Normal life has resumed.

And I know that a year from now, I’ll be going through this roller coaster all over again. But next time I’ll be armed with this knowledge and experience, no longer a green “debut author” but a seasoned writer who will have learned not to fret about things beyond her control. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself…

Has anyone else had a less-than-relaxing post-launch experience? Any tips on how to avoid the madness?

The Terrified Author Post

No, it's not another giveaway. *cue disappointed faces* This is the post where I confess how absolutely terrified I am that my book is coming out in 33 days. People might read it. Or they might not. They might like it. Or they might not. Right now, it's all in front of me--this big abstract MOMENT I've built up in my mind which could turn out to be anything from abysmally disappointing to supremely lovely to anywhere in between.

The strange thing is, as the release day ticks ever closer, instead of wanting to publicize and promote and pimp like crazy, more than ever I want to hide from the world--just hibernate in a comfy cell with no internet connection and emerge some time in May after it's all over. I'm an introvert at heart--always have been. Anything remotely resembling a spotlight sends me into "fight or flight" mode, and right now I'm a major flight risk.

But I know I can't go anywhere. I have a release date set. A launch party planned. Yes, family and friends and colleagues are coming out to cheer me on at a real live bookstore. There will be food! And a reading! And a signing! The stuff of my adolescent dreams! And while I am endlessly grateful for this opportunity and for the support of friends and loved ones, I am also still that little girl who cried when she got one question wrong on her Kindergarten achievement test.

Yes, I'm a perfectionist. A people pleaser. I want you to like me. I want you to like my words. The thought of my little book going out into the big scary world sometimes paralyzes me. And yet, this is why I took my manuscript out of the drawer one day and sent it away to agents. Because I wanted to be a writer then, and I still do. All introversion aside, I want to connect with people, and this is the best way I know how.

So on March 31, as much as I might want to hop the next flight to Mazatlan and not come back until I'm fluent in Spanish, I'll be at the Doylestown Bookshop signing copies of my book. If you live in the area, I'd love to see you there. And I'll try real hard not to throw up on your shoes.

Stress Dreams & Writing Deadlines

I was an anxious little kid. Consequently I used to have a lot of stress dreams. As a child my fears were big and amorphous, and my dreams followed suit: lions outside my front door, tidal waves bearing down on my house. As I grew older and my fears became more concrete, so did my dreams: showing up for a test I hadn’t studied for, realizing I had worn underwear to class. Even now I often have teacher stress dreams about showing up for school without a lesson plan or not being able to subdue an unruly classroom full of kids.

But two nights ago, I had what I think is my first identifiable writer’s stress dream. Oddly, it begins with a search for a seafood restaurant that’s gotten good reviews but is known for being in a sketchy neighborhood. I am scouting it out at dusk, just as it’s getting dark and the crowds are thinning out. I have trouble finding the place, and when I do it’s an unassuming little white building with no signage. I knock on the door, and a bland almost faceless male guide opens it and ushers me in, but he moves so fast I can’t keep up with him.

Once inside, I’m not in a restaurant but a shabby house with exposed pipes, chipping tile, and peeling wallpaper. I walk down a long white hallway toward a swinging 2-way door, the kind that normally leads into a kitchen. Only when I go through it, my guide has disappeared, and I have no idea which way to go. I turn left and go through a door to find myself in a tiny claustrophobic room. I’m suddenly terrified I won’t be able to get out. I pull aside a long curtain that hides a changing room, then try another door that’s locked. I begin to panic until I realize I can leave through the same door I entered.

However, this only brings me to more hallways and similar dead-ends until I open a door that leads to an enormous, cavernous space. The room seems to grow downward as I watch in awe. Concrete ramps appear, but the space is mammoth and dark and rugged, like the Mines of Moria in The Lord of the Rings. I’m beginning to wonder just what I’ve gotten myself into when a fluorescent light flickers above me, and the space slowly transforms into a giant library. Rows of bookshelves appear, and books magically fill them. The scary ramps are no longer frightful, so I descend into this basement library, wondering what I’m doing here when I was supposed to be finding a restaurant.

Even though I’m a fiction lover at heart, something compels me to the non-fiction section at the other end. I walk past rows and rows of books until I come to a library carrel holding a large folio laid out to showcase the portrait of a female figure. Just as I’m about to read who she is, I wake up. 

Eventually I fell back asleep. When I woke later, I told my husband about the dream and asked him what he thought it meant, and he turned to me and said, “It's probably about your writing.” And you know, I think he was right. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working feverishly on my sequel and trying to write an outline of the entire book for my editor. The dream seems to tap into a lot of the fears and self-doubt that have plagued me. 

In the dream, I go looking for a restaurant that doesn’t look like much on the outside but has gotten good reviews. These, I think, represent my expectations going into the writing process. But as I plunged into the actual writing, I found blank white hallways that led nowhere; exposed pipes and peeling wallpaper—all the messy false starts and loose story threads and dead-ends of writing a first draft.

The deeper I went, the darker and more overwhelming the entire manuscript became until it seemed like an endless cavern, too terrifying to investigate any further. But then—light! And books! And a sense of relief that I was in a library, a place of comfort and order and new ideas. Somehow I had crossed a threshold, turned a corner that let me know everything was going to be okay.

That mysterious open book in the non-fiction section still bothers me, but maybe my subconscious mind was directing me to take a look my own life and experiences and draw from those. Sometimes we’re so lost in the world of our fictional landscape that we forget where all good fiction ultimately stems--from real life. I have a feeling if I’d had time to investigate that book more closely, the woman in the portrait might have been me.

Do you have stress dreams? What’s the wildest one you’ve had?

Trilogy Trauma

 

A friend of mine recently noticed that I’d been describing my upcoming book as “the first in a planned trilogy,” so she asked me, “How does one plan a trilogy?” Funny question…

First off, I will admit that I wrote A BREATH OF EYRE as “a stand-alone novel with series potential.” That basically means that while the first book leaves some plot threads unresolved, the story is self-contained with no cliffhangers. However, when I finished writing the book and began thinking about what my next project would be, I realized I hadn’t let go of those characters yet. They were still knocking around in my head, begging for their story to be continued. After all, my protagonist, Emma, is only 16 at the end of the first book, in which she “travels” into her favorite novel, Jane Eyre. I started wondering how Emma’s love of escaping into books might both cause her problems and continue her growth as a character over the next two years of high school.

And thus, “series potential” was born! I quickly wrote up a brief synopsis for two more books that would continue Emma’s literary adventures, choosing The Scarlet Letter and The Phantom of the Opera as the books Emma would travel into in the sequels. My agent sent the first book out on submission to publishers with synopses of the sequels attached, and the trilogy sold to Kensington/KTeen last November!

Since I hadn’t written a word of the sequel back then, I always referred to A BREATH OF EYRE as the first in a “planned trilogy,” as planning was all I had done to that point. Now, I am about twenty thousand words into the sequel, and I’m beginning to realize sequels are particularly nasty beasts. Here are a few reasons why:

1.     A sequel should have the same “feel” as the first book, but it should be significantly different to offer readers a new reading experience.

2.     New characters should be introduced, but you must also continue to focus on the characters from the first book.

3.     Resolve most story threads from book one, but introduce a boatload of new conflicts to drive the third book.

4.     Your protagonist must continue the character growth initiated in the first book, but leave some room for growth in the final installment.

5.     Try not to let your sequel fall into “sagging middle book” syndrome. Keep the energy and action high!

Phew! I don’t know how J.K. Rowling did all this over SEVEN books! (Possibly because she’s a genius?)

While I am definitely in the writing stages of the sequel now, I find I am still planning as I go, taking a look back at events from the first book, analyzing character motivations, anticipating major plot points that will happen in the third book, and trying to incorporate all of this into my outline for the second book, tentatively called A TOUCH OF SCARLET. For anyone who had to endure reading The Scarlet Letter in high school, you’ll probably remember that underneath Hawthorne’s laborious prose is a pretty gripping story about sex and sin and shame, but also about pride. I hope it promises to be a fun adventure for both my characters and for me!

YA clichés

Since the young adult fiction market began to boom, certain conventions have woven their way into the fabric of YA literature, for better or for worse. Some of these elements are not unique to YA, just perhaps exploited or overused since the break-out success of franchises like Twilight and The Hunger Games. But now, readers might grumble or groan when they hear that a new book incorporates a love triangle or any other once-effective but now-trite plot device. This can make it difficult for a YA author to navigate the already treacherous terrain of plotting a first draft, because now she must also avoid these deadly pitfalls, even when they might seem integral or organic to the plot. It’s almost impossible to avoid them all, particularly if you are basing your story on an archetype like the hero’s journey. I suppose the trick is to avoid making one of these devices feel clichéd by investing it with a new twist or by writing so artfully that your audience never even realizes that you’re using a common trope.

Here are some of the more egregious offenses I’ve heard people rail against lately:

1.     the love triangle

2.     an impossibly beautiful paranormal love interest

3.     absentee parents

4.     the wise-cracking best friend

5.     the blonde mean girl
6. the love interest who initially acts like a jerk

Gah! (Guilty on some counts, here…) YA author Joelle Anthony has a much more comprehensive list that’s actually quite funny. But I’m curious, which YA clichés irritate you the most? Are there any that are so overused you won’t even pick up a book that incorporates them? For fun, take the quiz at the top right corner of my blog or comment below. Which YA cliché must go?

White Water Rafting or Tubing: Which Reader Experience Do You Prefer?

I just finished Veronica Roth’s stellar debut, Divergent, about a young girl who shocks her family and herself when she becomes part of a societal faction that emphasizes bravery and action above all other traits. The plot is a breakneck succession of twists, turns, thrills, reversals, and near misses. You don’t linger in this book; you plow through it breathlessly trying to reach the end. That’s not to say it doesn’t have an emotional arc or that it doesn’t have something serious to say about society—it absolutely has both. But reading it is kind of like white water rafting—you don’t experience it so much as crash wildly through it. You are constantly on your guard, pulse pounding as you wait for the next life-or-death decision, the next training sequence, the next dangerous person hovering around the corner. Like a rafting excursion, it’s exhilarating, unpredictable, and oh so entertaining. And when it’s over, you can’t quite remember how you reached the end, only that it was an amazing ride.

Then there are the slow meandering stories, full of languorous scenes that don’t seem to know where they’re going but move along so very prettily. This reading experience is more like tubing—you lean back and let your face feel the sun, dip your feet and hands in the water which feels like silk, study the river bank to see what kinds of trees are growing there, and look ahead for the little tumbles of water that will somehow manage to thrill. Sometimes it seems as though you’re not moving forward at all or that nothing’s really happening, and yet the whole experience is so pleasurable you don’t really care. Think Sarah Addison Allen’s Garden Spells or Sarah Dessen’s The Truth About Forever. These books lull and seduce us to the end, whispering, we’ll get there when we get there; just enjoy the ride.

 

As a reader, I thoroughly enjoy both kinds of books, bouncing back and forth between the two as my mood and schedule dictate. The first kind of book lasts only a night. A wild, passionate one-night stand. The second kind I like to make last, spreading it out over a week or more so I can linger in its world. A long, beautiful picnic of a date that ends with moonlit kisses and secrets divulged under the stars. As a writer, I’m constantly trying to figure out what kind of books I want to write. Perhaps it doesn’t have to be an either-or; perhaps I can write the same way I read, seeking out adventure and danger in scenes as brisk and intoxicating as the river rapids, then retreating to the comfort of passages as slow and sultry as a summer afternoon.

In your book choices, are you a thrill-seeker or a basker? Any great reading suggestions for either?

To Plot or Not to Plot

I’ve been thinking a lot about the writing process lately. I’m about halfway through my third novel, and it confirms everything I’ve read about writing books. Each book is unique, and therefore, the process of writing each is wildly different. And contrary to logic, this third one is proving to be my toughest.

One of the aspects I’m struggling with is plot. Now, there are some master plotters out there, writers who introduce the conflict on page 1, then zip through a series of complications, near misses, and well-timed twists, leaving you nearly breathless by the end. I have never been this kind of writer, preferring to let my plots evolve organically, to let my characters dictate the sequence of events. My first book (Time and Tide, which did not get published) was based loosely on a novel by Jane Austen (talk about a good plotter), so I didn’t have much to worry about there. My plot came practically ready-made.

For Free to a Good Home (which releases next summer), I had the initial concept and characters and wrote the first fifty pages in a blur of inspiration or something like that, then sat back for a while to let the characters marinate and see where they wanted to take the story. This marinating stage is the point at which I still might abandon a story, even if I love the characters, because I can’t seem to find a compelling journey to send them on. But with Free to a Good Home, I found that journey.

Now, I’m midway through Book #3, past the point of no return, but at the point I’d like to call the Wednesday of the book, or hump day. I’m stuck. For the past week, I’ve written every day, but I have a feeling when I go back to revise later, I will end up deleting much of what I wrote. I just felt I needed to keep pushing through the wall, keep my characters moving. Now the question is, are they going anywhere?

Someone once said, when you get stuck like this, send in a man with a gun. Great advice for a mystery writer, but not so great when you’re writing a character-driven novel about three generations living under one very small roof. But I do like the idea of shaking things up a bit. Sometimes I think I’m afraid of too much conflict, but what is a novel without it? An unexpected twist could be the very thing I need right now to untie the knot that’s been keeping my characters treading water. Now I just need to find my story’s equivalent of a man with a gun. And hope that one of my characters knows karate.

Writer's Guilt

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Art is a jealous mistress.” For me, writing is more like my dog after I’ve come home from vacation. Whenever my husband and I are away from Maggie for more than two days, she gives us a guilt trip for a good forty-eight hours after we return. Eventually she reverts back to her usual, devoted self, following us around the house, sprawling on our laps, and giving us long, adoring glances. But on those days when she’s giving us the cold shoulder, it’s hard to have faith that she’ll come back to us.

Writing is the same for me. If I skip more than two days, it takes me so long to get back into my groove. The laptop screen stares blankly at me, as if to say, “What have you done for me lately?” At that moment, I think to myself, “That’s it. It’s over. I’ve lost the ability to write. Might as well close the laptop forever and take up decoupage.”

For the first two weeks of summer vacation, I was very loyal to my laptop, writing almost every day and averaging about six pages a day. Then I hit a wall. Every writer does eventually, sometimes in the form of a stumbling block, a hiccough in our plot line or a character we can’t quite wrap our head around. I’ve hit that kind of wall, too, but this one was more just a function of life getting the best of me.

Two days ago, I went for a long walk with my husband, did some homework for a course I’m taking, and sat in the yard with a book (Claire Cook’s Life’s a Beach, to mirror my wishful thinking). Yesterday I went out to lunch with a dear friend and thought I’d be home in time to get a few hours of writing in, but ended up having such a good time that I stayed out all afternoon. Today I went food shopping and cleaned the house for a Fourth of July party we’re hosting.

I know when I try to write tomorrow, I will stare forlornly at the screen for an hour, trying to recapture that writing energy of three days ago. I might write a pitiful paragraph or two that I’ll end up scrapping, and maybe, if I’m lucky, by the end of the day I’ll have written one page worth keeping. But the ideas will come back eventually; the words will return.

Now, I am sitting on my front stoop, listening to the competing stereos of my neighbors, smelling grills warm up all over town. I don’t hear a single lawnmower or see a single jogger on the road. People have taken the day off. Some time this summer, consider giving yourself a day off, too. From writing, or exercising, or whatever it is that you love, but tends to give you a guilt trip when it’s been neglected. It’ll still be there for you the next day; you might just have to work a little harder at winning back its devotion. But the dog will forgive you, the treadmill will get easier again, and your inspiration will return.

For today, throw that second hot dog on the grill. Put whipped cream on your strawberry and blueberry pound cake. (It would be un-American not to.) Enjoy the day, guilt-free. And have a safe and happy Fourth!

It's summertime, and the living is easy...

I’m certain I’m committing some kind of blogging sacrilege here by writing this post in longhand to be typed into the computer later. My excuse is that I want to sit outside with my dog, and my laptop screen is difficult to see in sunlight. But the truth is I’m a little tech-ed out. When I saw my laptop this morning, waiting expectantly on the coffee table, I got a little shiver of dread I don’t usually associate with inanimate objects. The past two weeks have been a mad dash to get my website, Facebook page, Twitter account, and blog up and running, and while my brother has handled the toughest details (Thank you, Phil!!), I am still weary of looking at that horizontal digital screen. Perhaps it’s time for a little old school writing, with classic 8 ½ by 11 lined notebook paper and a Bic pen.

Today, I plan to enjoy the gorgeous summer weather—78 degrees, blue sky with cotton candy clouds, balmy breeze. The birds are twittering in my Rose of Sharon, and the treetops are swaying lazily overhead. My lawn is freshly mown and vibrant green from all that unexpected rain we got last week, and my container garden is flourishing—red, white, and blue petunias that get me in the mood for Fourth of July, planters of purple sage and fuchsia impatiens, and hanging baskets with delicate lantana the color of pink Wedgewood. For privacy, we just decorated our fence with Tiki fringe, which right now is rustling in the wind, taking me away to some tropical paradise where Jimmy Buffett is always playing on the radio and margaritas are always served ice cold with salt on the rim.

People have written songs about days like this. I might just stay out until the sun sets and the temperature dips below 65. The fireflies will alight from the ground, illuminating the trees like stadium flashes. I’ll watch the bats’ erratic flight patterns between the trees, counting on them and the citronella torches to keep the mosquitoes at bay. My husband and I might open that bottle of Italian white we’ve had chilling in the refrigerator and make a toast to summer.

For today, the laptop will remain closed. My next chapter will have to wait until tomorrow. I’m on vacation.

If at first you don't succeed...

Even though I had never really considered doing it for a living, I have always loved writing, from that first story I wrote for my mom in third grade (something to do with a bunch of balloons that get released and find homes with different children all over the world), to some truly terrible teen angst poetry, to the short stories I wrote in my college creative writing class back when I thought I could write short stories, to the seriously flawed screenplay I wrote in my late twenties about a fictional love affair between Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson (I know, I know, what was I thinking?). Something in my nature has always wanted to put things down on paper—it’s how I learned geometry principles in high school, it’s how I made sense of existential philosophy in college, and it’s how I now explore ideas and human nature in my fiction.

It was about four years ago that I decided I was going to write FOR REAL, as in, seriously try to become a novelist. So I wrote my first novel, Time and Tide, went through the long and potentially soul-crushing process of sending query letters, receiving rejections (lots!), and getting those little nibbles that keep you going for a while, but in the end, fail to materialize into anything substantial. For whatever reason, Time and Tide did not make it to publication.

I don’t have children, but my friends who do, speak of “pregnancy amnesia,” the phenomenon whereby a mother forgets all the pain and anguish that accompanied her pregnancy so she is willing to go through the process again. I would say that the writer’s journey to publication is a bit akin to this, because what writer would willingly put themselves through the torment and pain of rejection if it weren’t for some form of temporary amnesia, and of course, the fervent hope that there might be a bouncing, healthy manuscript at the end of it all?

Hungry to write another novel, I began Free to a Good Home in December of 2007 over the winter holiday. I teach high school English full-time, so my only substantial writing happens during vacations and summer break. By spring break of 2008, I had outlined the basic story and written the first few chapters, then I wrote like crazy over the summer to finish and revise the manuscript. In fall began the cycle of query, waiting, rejection, query, waiting, rejection.

It wasn’t until about December when I began to feel desperate, so I went back through my list of agents and wrote down the ones I hadn’t heard from. Of those, I double-checked their websites to see which agents welcomed a follow-up email versus those for whom no response meant no interest. It’s a testament to the value of persistence and good record keeping that one of these “follow-up” agents ended up becoming my real agent. I am happy to say that the second time around was a charm for me, as Free to a Good Home garnered me an agent in the lovely and ultra professional, April Eberhardt of Reece Halsey North. (www.reecehalseynorth.com)

April replied to tell me my original query and sample had gotten lost in their vetting program, but that her assistant, Maria, had found it since and flagged it as “strong.” You can imagine my excitement, tempered as it was by a substantial dose of reality. I’d had my heart crushed before, and I knew that even if April agreed to represent me, there was no guarantee she’d be able to sell my book.

So April, Maria, and I entered into a stage of extensive revision during which we got the manuscript into its most polished and most marketable form. After about two months, April offered me formal representation. I know every publication story is different and that many writers have gotten published without an agent. But I have no doubt that Free to a Good Home would not have found a publisher if it weren’t for the keen eye and publishing savvy of April, who helped me strengthen both the story and the writing, then went on to sell the manuscript in only four weeks. The good news continued when I found that my editor would be Jackie Cantor, executive editor of Berkley Books. (http://us.penguingroup.com/static/pages/publishers/adult/berkley.html) I have since gotten several emails and one phone call from Jackie, who is warm and supportive and sharp and everything an editor should be. I am so thrilled to be working with her!

In the weeks that followed “the call,” I have been busy setting up my media presence so I can start generating some buzz for the book and gathering a following prior to publication in July 2010. That gives me roughly a year to take care of final revisions, marketing, and of course, to work on my new novel so I can (fingers crossed) go through the whole process again next year. But this time, no amnesia necessary. This is a year I won’t likely forget.