My very first book, started when I was fourteen, was a mess. It was all of the stuff I liked, mashed down into a story about as coherent as alphabet soup in a garbage disposal: Punk rock, mysterious autumn-themed imagery, road trips, and some mix of a ghost story and an internal monologue. I finished it in college. I still love it like a childhood blanket, but it is, objectively, a disaster.
My writer-brain has evolved a lot since then. It wrote a few plays, a few half-novels, and then one year (with outside encouragement) it sat down for NaNoWriMo and finished a book. I was thrilled. I wrote a book. It's even kind of good. I can do anything. That novel, The Big Book of Post-Collapse Fun, went through professional editing and I tossed it out on Amazon, where it's done pretty well for itself. But the important part to me was still that I had finished it at all. I wrote a book.
The next year, I did it again.
Since then, I've finished three novels and have plans for more. The plan is to write one book a year, alternating between my two trilogies until both are complete before starting on one of my ten thousand back burner ideas.
The trouble is, the books don't care about my plans.
My writer-brain is like a sled dog now. We've done this before, it says, and we can do it again. Let's go.
No, I say. I've got doctor's appointments and I have to fix the sink and I've just generally got a life to run.
Don't care, says the writer-brain. I've got ideas.
I insist and attempt to go about my life.
Fine, the writer-brain says. I'll start without you.
And it does.
If you ever find me scribbling notes while my scrambled eggs burn on the stove, this is why it happens.