Writing Book 2: Part 1

Stopping and Starting. And Stopping Again.


Once upon a time, back in January 2013, I started planning what I fondly name 'Poor Book 2' while Book 1 - A Beginner's Guide To Salad - was on hold between drafts. I finished A Beginner's Guide To Salad in April and started submitting it to agents while diving into the first draft of Book 2.

Not long after, I received some feedback from one of the agents I'd submitted to and decided to do a bit of tweaking to A Beginner's Guide, which meant putting Book 2 on hold. Tweaking over, I resumed writing Book 2 until, at just over half way in, I decided to self-publish A Beginner's Guide (as explained here).

I found an editor for A Beginner's Guide and was about 80% into Book 2 when I received the edits back and began working on them. This meant that Poor Book 2 had to go on hold again - you can see why I feel a bit sorry for it by now. Even though I was almost done, I knew I had to get my skates on with A Beginner's Guide as I wanted to release a festive short story, A Beginner's Guide To Christmas, first.

So Poor Book 2 was neglected once again and I didn't pick it up again until November. Luckily for me, I'm a massive planner (ridiculously so), which meant I was able to see exactly where I was up to and where I was heading next at a glance.

I must admit it was a little strange dipping into the book again and it took a while to feel like I was back into the story so I wouldn't recommend the stop-start approach, but I somehow got there and the first draft was completed in December. The book is on hold - again - but this is normal for me as I like to leave a few weeks between drafts. I've just picked it back up again and while I know I have a lot of work to do on it, I'm strangely looking forward to the challenge.