So, I have done it.
Finally, I have finished writing my first book.
Don’t ask me what ever got into my head that thought this was a good idea. I had this little voice in there telling me that it was something I could do and it would be easy. Ha. That little voice was so wrong. I won’t say it was difficult. The writing was the easy part. It was the other ‘stuff’ that got in my way….
I never, ever, had any inclination to write a book. Then one day, over a year ago, and I don’t know why, I got this idea for a story. Driving to work one morning and this idea popped into my head. I hadn’t seen or read anything like it before and I decided I might try to put the words onto paper (well, into my computer) but I wanted to incorporate my real life happenings and people into the story. I had kind of thought it through in my head, but not all the details, and not an ending to the story. Just the premise of the story was there, but I figured it would come to me.
I mostly wrote during my lunch hour at work. I would close my door and type while I ate my lunch. I was only able to write a couple pages a day, and not every day, but the pace worked for me. I took my computer home many nights with intentions of writing at night and too many other things got in the way. You know, the cooking, cleaning, and family things. (well, not so much the cleaning…)
It was my secret. I was the only one who knew I was doing this. I hadn't told anyone, not even my husband. Nobody. It was my little secret.
So after about six months of writing and having a good story going (at least in my mind), I was eating my lunch one day and looking through my emails and saw one from a website I had signed up for that was intended for people writing books. It had tips and ideas and ways to do all the things associated with writing a book. The headline caught my attention ‘How not to write a book’, so I clicked the link and after reading it, really wished I hadn’t.
The article was about the things you should never do when writing a book. The number one thing not to do was to write without a timeline or base story outlined first. Well pooh, I thought, I already messed that up. I hadn’t written any kind of timeline or outline and was just winging it. I had the thoughts in my head but that was as far as they had gotten.
So stupidly, I started a new document and tried to write out a story line and timeline. I used a bullet list and started at day one of my story. I found myself having to go back and actually look at the days in what I had written to see what happened. I was not liking this process because it was taking away from my writing time, but I could see where it would be helpful. I got the timeline done up to the point where I had finished writing. Now I just had to map out the rest of the story. I put some vague thoughts onto the page and after about a week of lunch hour notes, I had the story mapped out where I thought it would go.
Now I just had to finish writing it. But instead of free flowing words, I found myself trying to adhere to my timeline and it really seemed to cause more of a hindrance than the help it was supposed to be. I got aggravated and put it aside and didn’t write for a couple months. I wrote nothing. Nada. Zilch. For a long time. Then one day driving to work, I made up my mind that I was going to finish it and started writing again that day at lunch. The words seemed to come easy and I plugged along for a couple weeks. I was almost there, almost.
We went on our summer vacation and I took it with me with intentions of finishing the writing while relaxing on the balcony overlooking the ocean listening to the waves breaking on the beach. Yeah, that didn’t work. I did work on it a little, but found myself getting way too distracted with all the cool things to do at the beach.
When we got back from vacation and work calmed down a bit, I started back to writing again and after a couple more weeks I finally wrapped up the story and thought I was finished. Ha, thought I was finished. Boy, was I wrong again!
Thinking I was done, once again, I had gone back to the website for beginning authors and was reading through some of the helpful hints and ideas. So, the first one after you completed your writing, was to re-read the book from start to finish. I thought this was dumb because I wrote the stupid book, so I knew what happened. But I figured they knew what they were talking about and started at the beginning.
As I read my book from the beginning, I looked for timeline issues, details left out, and made sure I had names right as I went through it again. I did find a couple errors with names or references and fixed those easily as I read through the book. I had already done spelling and grammar checks, so that seemed to all be ok. Maybe these so called experts knew what they were talking about.....
I was to the last chapter and I read a sentence about the weapon and where it was found. And my jaw dropped and my heart about stopped. Wait a minute, she can’t find the weapon, it was found at the murder scene. Oh crap, now I have two weapons. My mind was spinning. Well, this was not good. The whole premise of solving the mystery was based on this.
Now what do I do. Damn, damn, damn…….
Stay tuned for blog part 2.
