My Spastic and Poorly Organized Looking Back at 2014 Post

You want to know what's crazy? Me and my year. Or is that "My year and I"? Whatever.

I've had a certifiably insane year. So much so that it's time for a list:

Crazy Things That Have Happened to Me:

1) I sold a book.

2) I got a really cool editor (because I have a really cool agent who knew how to sell it).

3) I took awesome trips to New York, Michigan, and Iowa.

4) I finished LIFE IN BOOLEAN VARIABLES and started two other books of drastically different themes and tones. Maybe they'll have a race to see which finishes first?

5) I taught fourth grade for my second year after previously teaching fifth. I'm starting to feel the ground beneath my feet. I'm sure it will disappear again soon.

6) I ate a whole lot of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I'm serious. We're talking epic amounts. My wife is thoroughly grossed out.

7) I got ARCs of I AM DRUMS in the mail. Read about how that went here.

8) People are actually reading the ARCs and that is flat out insane to think about.

9) I worked really hard at being a good father. I failed most of the time, but remain proud of the times I succeeded.

10) I had the privilege of... wait, I kind of forgot what this one was going to be.

Anyway, that's my looking back post for 2014. It's not very organized. There are others out there that are much better, but it's honest and it's wonderful to me.

2015 is going to be insane. I'm thoroughly excited and worried, but I'll save that for another post when I have my wits about me.

LUNCH BOX, my Nanowrimo experiment

Here's a short list of things currently causing me to panic:

1) Report cards.
2) PT Conferences.
3) PT Conference with my child's teacher(s).
4) Something I can't talk about yet.
5) LIFE IN BOOLEAN VARIABLES, an intensely personal book that almost killed me (not literally), is in the hands of beta-readers, and I already see millions of things I wish I'd fixed before sending it out.
6) Something will pop into my head five minutes from now, and I will worry about it even though there is nothing to worry about.
7) I want to hold an ARC of I AM DRUMS in my hands (this will happen in the next few months, so I should chill out about this, too. Fat chance!).
8) I am taking over the spelling bee at school, because I'm just not busy enough (and I'm secretly a spelling nerd who never had a spelling bee at his elementary school).
9) I just thought of something that fits #6 perfectly. AAAAAAAH!

Now, on top of all of that, I've jumped into NANOWRIMO for the first time. Why am I doing this? I have no time. I'll be lucky if I hit 20k by November 30th, much less the goal of 50k. I'm setting myself up to fail, which is exactly what modern educational pedagogy tells me not to do.

But I'm doing it anyway. Because I said so, and I'm an adult. I can eat ice cream three meals a day if I want, and there's nothing you can do about it. I've earned the right to try NANOWRIMO for my first time and fail at it if I feel so inclined.

And I will fail. I'm okay with laying it out there ahead of time, because it's true and there's no sense pretending otherwise. This is not pessimism because it is certain -- I have a 0% chance of winning NANOWRIMO. It's the exact opposite of pessimism, in fact, because I'm giving myself permission to fail, and appreciating the material I will create on my road to failure. Oddly enough, this is a theme that surfaced late in my first draft of LIBV while listening to the well of ideas inside my head.

It's a little book (or maybe a big book. How should I know?) called LUNCH BOX. It's very different from my last two finished novels, even though it's middle grade and very much me at the writing wheel. It's a bit sillier than I AM DRUMS and LIBV, but it also might end up -- dare I say it -- scarier. It has a Calvin and Hobbes meets Wayside School thing going on, and I'm not sure if that's a recipe for success or a recipe for going back to the drawing board on December first. But it has promise, I think.

I'll settle for it being fun. I'm at 5,400 words as of the moment I'm writing this, and at this rate, I will finish 50k sometime between the hare's second and third nap. But at least I'll finish.

I joined NANOWRIMO this year because I win either way. Take that, procrastination! You always were kind of a punk.

Post Book Deal Writing and the Six Week Wait

LIFE IN BOOLEAN VARIABLES is done. The first draft, at least. Any writer, published or aspiring, will tell you first drafts do not really equal "done", but it feels good to use that word right now. I have a complete manuscript and an official follow-up to I AM DRUMS.

It feels especially good because LIBV gave me a lot of trouble. I almost abandoned it for another project multiple times. I thankfully discovered through my fellow debut authors at Fearless Fifteeners that the second book (or, in most cases, the first book post book deal) is usually a terrible process. Expectations are all over the place. You want to assure everyone who has invested in you that you are not a one trick pony. This is all ridiculous thinking, but try telling that to me several months ago.

Some articles by fellow writers have helped me feel less insane about the whole thing:

N.K. Traver wrote an excellent blog post called "Second Book Syndrome". She discusses this whole thing with better words than I am using in this post.

Robin LaFevers wrote an article, The Crushing Weight of Expectations, which covers almost every fear I've experienced since the book deal went through.

In reality, the worst thing you can do is worry -- all it does is freeze you in place and make you question the authenticity of your writing when what you should really be doing is WRITING WRITING WRITING and seeing what comes out. I've never benefited from expectations, genre-chasing, or questioning my literary credentials. I've benefited from putting my ass in a chair and writing.

Now that LIFE IN BOOLEAN VARIABLES is done, I have set a date on my calendar exactly six weeks from the moment I finished. That is the minimum amount of time I must wait before reading through and spotting all the silly grammatical and plotting mistakes I've made. It provides distance from your role as writer and helps you to see your work through an objective reader's lens. Last time I used this model, I ended up with a book that was bought by a real publisher. It probably won't hurt to do that again.