I finished the first draft of the book. I likely rushed through some bits near the end, and I need to go back and refactor two pieces to add more depth to characters that were throwaway at first, but developed their own plot points as things evolved.
I’d always assumed that I’d go straight into those rewrites when I hit the end of the book, but the truth is, it’s a little hard to focus on the characters so soon after reaching the end. So I made a few changes, and a few notes to myself and decided to just jump straight into the second book.
The second book centers around the sister of the male lead in the first book, and it was always my plan to write them both before I publish the first one. This makes it seem justified to pause work on the original book to focus on the new one, but I might just be falling victim to shiny object syndrome, since starting new characters is very appealing to me. The original characters are happy and in love, they don’t need my attention.
Meanwhile, it occurs to me that I can’t move on to typesetting or book cover design anyway, because the book has no name. The file is called “Book.” The second book file is named. . . wait for it. . . “2nd Book.”
I write very fast, the books just seem to be sitting inside my head waiting to be written down. For the most part, I sit in front of my laptop and I just type. However, I struggle with names. Every time I introduce a new character, I have to stop typing and think.. . .Joe? Carlos? Stephen? With “Book”, I decided to stop obsessing over it and just pick a name and use find-and-replace to change them later as needed.
But I’ll need to lock them in soon, or the book will never be done, and I’m guessing the title is going to be pretty critical to people actually wanting to read the thing…
If I ever actually have readers of this blog, I will take name suggestions.