Over the last couple of weeks (ignoring that I can’t stop thinking about what’s happening with the first book, and I’m going nuts to the point of rewriting common lyrics to, “All I want for Christmas is a book deal,” etc…), I’ve been very focused on working with the raw, in-progress manuscript for the second novel, pulling together sections for the Millennials serialization.
I’ve just cobbled together the final piece, Anaïs’s section, which runs on Wednesday, and am pleased with how much I’ve learned about two of my three main characters throughout this process. This second book—or what I’m hoping will take enough shape to be called that—started as a bunch of collected fragments I’d penned between laptop and Moleskine; heads I wanted to pop into for shits and giggles; people whose worlds I thought could be kind of cool to explore; characters with whom I wasn’t done, even as the first book went to editors. The fact that their lives crossed were mostly chance for which I felt silly taking puppet-master responsibility. But their sections still laid pretty disconnected, and their futures fairly uncertain.
Through the fabulous modern convenience of cut and paste, I’ve learned a lot more about the raw motivations behind why Anaïs and Nate do the things they do, blame the people they blame, and have made the strange decisions that ended up on paper. Little disjointed vignettes are now decidedly fitting, several-thousand word interconnected sections—and all of the actions playing out seem to stem from reasoning (however irrational) more concrete than “because I said so.”
I’ve missed the feeling of putting pieces together, of jumping in and out of minds, and of possessing myself with the creepy, haunted, and fucked up motivations of disturbed characters. And, being candid? I’ve also missed remembering that I can do this. (I can.)
M
