Knuckling Down

So apparently, if you don't log onto Facebook often enough, Facebook sends you helpful little emails reminding you of your antisocial behavior. This is hysterical. It's also a trap I'm not falling into.

I've realized there's a pattern to the way novels pull at you - or, at least me - when you write them. The first half is going up the roller coaster, that slow chug-chug-chug of the chains catching with screeching sounds and the car lurching until you're convinced the whole thing's coming off the rails any second and you're about to become an evening news story entitled Tragic coaster derailing kills five.

But then the halfway point arrives, and all of a sudden you're plummeting headlong down the drop, and everything's clicking: the wheels glide, the tugging stops, and everything around you turns to this blur of earth and sky, without detail or meaning, and all the loops and barrel curls, the sudden switchbacks - they're nothing you can't handle.

When I get to the halfway point and what lies beyond, I get very focused. I'm knuckled down right now on Dream of You, and for the moment, before the editing and marketing and futile attempts to impart excitement in others, I couldn't be happier.

See, this is why my family gives me odd looks. Because I compare book writing to roller coasters and want to discuss fictional people instead of real ones.