This book I'm Writing

So, I'm writing this book, this story about a teen girl who is telepathic but doesn't know it, and thinks she crazy, until a new boy transfers to her school who is also telepathic, and fills her in on what's going on with her. It's all clean and innocent.

Problem is, I'm not having any fun writing it. I want to get back to my series, which takes off in a different direction after the first three books. I want to get back to my characters, who I know really well. And I like the idea I have for the story in the first book. So why not just go ahead and start writing it? One reason: I'm waiting to talk to a consultant about details for the book. I don't want to write a lot, then have to go back and change a bunch of stuff after I talk to the consultant. And I don't know when I'll be able to talk to the consultant--it depends on their very busy schedule. And I like to have my research done before I start writing.

Another reason: what do I do with the 16,000 words I've already written on the telepathic teen book? Do I make it into a long short story? Do I just put it aside and see what happens later, how I feel about it later? I think I'm going to have to put it aside for a while. I'm just not feeling it. I don't want to write 60,000+ words more about it.

Thanks for being her while I talked that out. I think I've made my decision. I don't think I'm meant to be a YA novelist.

On Writing

First, there's an idea. Just a little spark. A moment of "what if?"
For many people it ends there, because of demands of the outside world, loss of interest, fear. It's daunting to start writing. There you are, sitting with your blank paper or empty screen, trying to make something magical happen. You want to write the perfect book. And as long as you think that way, you'll never get started. Writing is messy, cluttered, sometimes random. You have to get this mess into a computer or a ream of paper so that you can begin the process of revising. This is where the real work is, where you take that mess that you made and turn it into a book. It's not as fun as writing, but it's just as important. Or even more important.

I make a lot of notes on a separate Word document when I write. It's full of good sentences that don't have a home yet, a few words to denote a scene I want to add, random ideas which may or may not get used. It's messy, and I have to scroll through it to find what I'm looking for, but it's a place to put what's in my head somewhere until I can attend to it fully. I don't worry about spelling, punctuation, or grammar in this document. If I didn't make this document, I would have a thousand post-it notes stuck all over the table, in a certain order, and color-coded. Which sounds a little like the opposite of my catch-all "Ideas" file. And I would probably spend more time organizing the post-it notes than writing, frankly.