There's a Book in My Head

[Peg Herring]

It's not necessarily a good thing, but it's the way things happen for me. A book springs into my head almost like the goddess rising fully formed from the sea. I know who the characters are, what's going to happen, and what mood I want to create.

Unfortunately, I have a zillion things to do besides write all that down, and I know from experience that it's an all-absorbing process that takes weeks, even months for just a first draft.

How do authors write while they're marketing the book(s) that came before? How do they find time to think, plot, create, and execute while making calls and writing letters, sending off press kits and ordering bookmarks? Oh, and there's that thing called Life that happens at the same time, so that feeding the cats and having actual conversations with friends is advisable, often necessary, for the sake of sanity.

It's yet another part of publishing that I'd heard discussed by fellow writers but never really grasped until now, when I'm in the midst of it. Understand, I'm not complaining. I wouldn't give it up, but I have a whole new respect for those writers who manage a book a year and still show up smiling for signings and readily respond to fans and followers. We're mostly solitary people, yet to be allowed to do what we love we must become public commodities. That book inside my head will have to wait, at least for today.

[Burl Barer]

oh, i forgot to say, but I will now, that I write the book in my head and see it as a movie. I then edit the movie, rewrite the movie, and when it is all done, I write the book. Does that make sense? This is very economical...I can "daydream" anytime I want and daydreaming for a writer is "working." By the time I actually begin typing, the book is 65 % complete..i'm just typing on screen what I have already written in my "daydream"

[Burl Barer]

The answer to the time crunch question is simple -- clone yourself and never sleep. I write at least two books a year, on average - or a book and a book equivelant project (screenplay adaptation, ghost writing gig, etc) PLUS I spend endless hours on line as I am an internet addict, and also consult, kibbitz, and screw around with broadcasting as well. Wrirting is solitary, and I am gregarious -- go figure.