After finishing my first book back in January, I had a disturbing thought that (naturally) turned into a burdensome worry: It had been more than a year since I'd started The Wide and Burning World, and I didn't remember how I'd done it! 138k words is the most I've ever written about any single thing, and while it flowed out fairly smoothly, I simply couldn't recall the way I'd actually set forth to make a story that long. What if I couldn't do it again? There are two books left in the trilogy, Salt Spray and Fine Things and Pulling Colors from the Sun. How would I write them, if I couldn't remember how I'd begun in the first place? Was this going to be like so many other projects, doomed to incompletion? It couldn't have just happened, with no method... or could it?
Recently, a feeling I know has started creeping in at the cracks. I'm starting to think plot again, to draft pages when inspiration comes, to repeat wording that I like to myself. This is it! A book is starting to happen. Which sounds dumb, I know, and which of course isn't all of it. I'm becoming increasingly practiced at crafting narrative, inventing characters, researching and editing, and without those skills, I wouldn't be writing. But the way it starts is in embracing the momentum. This book's like a boulder at the top of a hill: I could put my back into it and push it until it rolls or I can be glad the earth is shaking. Now what I've got to learn is to trust that it will happen when I need it to... and that I can put my shoulder to my project if I need to. Let's roll.
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