Just began my next book (nonfiction)

[rachelmanija]

Sucks. Sucks. Suckity suck suck suck. However, this is probably normal.

I almost began with the midget clown story, then decided that I should probably not open two books in a row with midget stories. Also, although it was sort of the inciting incident, in itself it doesn't have all that much relevance to the book as a whole. Wheras the burning car story (for those of you familiar with my life, this was the first burning car when I was nineteen) has less immediate relevance, but encapsulates a lot of the themes of the rest of the book, and is also more dramatic. So burning car it is. For now.

Comments

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

Book book book! *support support support*

[misia.livejournal.com]

The sucking sound is normal. It gradually goes away, but never heals entirely until after the book has been published for long enough that you start to forget what writing it was like.

Burning cars? The idea that there have been more than one is alarming. I am glad that you are still here to tell the tale, hon.

[janni.livejournal.com]

Books always suck at the beginning.

They suck later too, but it's especially bad at the beginning, when you have this polished just-completed book in front of you, and have forgotten how badly it once sucked, because it seems pretty good, now. :-)

And I think, actually, that the second book is the scariest, because of the fear that maybe the first was just a bit of dumb luck. (It wasn't, but we all have that fear!)

[seajules]

Well, you certainly have my attention. *G*

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

Starting books with midget stories can become a sly in-joke, like "See you next Wednesday" in movies that John-what's-his-name directs.

[mcdolemite.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I should include the midget French-Canadian clown woman who stalked me when I was tripping on the Vicodin I'd mistakenly taken instead of Prevacid (as I discovered when Oz -- my late iguana, not Set Green -- bit off the ball of my thumb, Vicodin makes me paranoid. And really, the midget stories are so different that I don't think you'd be stuck in a rut of midget openings (hmmm, that didn't sound right) if you decided to use it.

I want, ofcourseofcourseofcourse, to read this proposed second book, as I would want to read anything you wrote, even a sharecropped Baen novel that said JERRY POURNELLE's C.O.C.K. FORCE in big chrome letters and your name in very small ones (not that you're likely to be swapping book contract with John Ringo!). And you are, ofcourseofcourseofcourse, a TERRIFIC non-fiction writer who's lived a fascinating life, so of course you should go with that.

BUTbutbut, I do hope this means that INDEPENDENCE hasn't been consigned to a trunk or anything like that.

[mcdolemite.livejournal.com]

I mean "include in my proposed Kinko's novel" in the first sentence above. Is there a way to edit LJ comments that I'm just not seeing?