Go with Where the Energy Is

Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Love in the Third Degree.

I can’t believe how fast this new book is going. It’s the most narrative thing I’ve ever written. I don’t think it’s boring, but there’s definitely a lot of telling going on without lots of pithy dialogue, though the pithy dialogue starts at Chapter Two. It’s introspective and dark, more “revelation” than “plot.” Yet it’s full of twists and turns and lessons and deep emotion and…catharsis.

This is absolutely the moment to write this book. It has to be now. Not when I’m done with my current project, but now. I think I’ll easily be finished in a few weeks. It’s one of those “open any vein” books.

It has all that usual “new manuscript” excitement. I’ve had this before, especially with various book proposals I wrote for various NYC publishers. The smart thing back then was plot a book, develop characters, and write 3 chapters and a synopsis of whatever I was terribly excited about. Then ship it off to NYC and wait for weeks…usually many months…sometimes well over a year.

By the time I heard back, the excitement was long gone. I’d have to pump up those old feelings and try to revive my old romance with the story. I think it was Vicki Hinze who used to say that it was like taking your characters for a test drive. I somehow always thought of people who took their unwanted pets for a drive in the countryside and put them out in the dark to wait to see if anyone would want them. I felt I was leaving my characters and story out there in the middle of nowhere, alone, abandoned, but with the possibility that I might come back for them.

Even though it made good business sense to write “partials” because that way you didn’t invest too much time in a book that didn’t fit the current market, I hated it. I hated getting excited about the story and then having to shelve it, sometimes for years.

But it’s amazing how fast you can write—or do anything else—when you have the force of that energy behind you, like a firehose to propel you through the story. This feels like riding the energy, and I’m taking advantage of it while it’s here rather than chide myself about what I “should” be working on.

I’m following the excitement because the excitement factor is a force multiplier unlike any other.