Nose to the grindstone (A writing update)

Time for a brief update on the writing business!

At the Oscars the other night, Robert De Niro presented one of the screenwriting awards, and in his presentation speech, he said this:

“The mind of a writer can be a truly terrifying thing. Isolated, neurotic, caffeine-addled, crippled by procrastination and consumed by feelings of panic, self-loathing and soul-crushing inadequacy. And that’s on a good day.”

Isn't that the truth, especially those last two! Most of the time I'm pretty confident in my abilities as a writer, but I have moments when I sit around in withering conviction that I'm not fooling anybody, that I totally suck, that I will never ever ever be any good at all.

But then I usually snap out of it. As John Cleese said in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, after revealing that he had been turned into a newt, "I got better!"

Anyway, I got the first round of edits done on Princesses II: Back in Blue (not the actual title) in early February, and since then, I've started hearing back from the beta readers, who are providing good and useful feedback. As for Princesses I: The Book That Started It All (not the actual title), I'm still waiting on that one until the summer months, at which point it's time to start whipping that book into shape for publication late in the year. Plus, at that point I'll probably start letting out drips and drabs of information about the story...including...the actual title!

And then there's Lighthouse Boy, on which I managed to get myself stuck on a particular plot point for quite a while. I did the backtrack-and-attack-again thing three or four times, but I think I've finally managed to crack through that particular problem. All it took was a complete reimagining of the main character and what he wants to accomplish in life! Writing: it allows us to avoid rethinking our own life choices by rethinking those of fictional people!

I think I may be forgetting something...oh yeah, I have a complete manuscript of GhostCop (not the actual title) sitting here someplace. I should probably figure out what to do with that, too....