Why it took me five years to write The Counterfeit Queen

 Why it took me five years to write my most recent book, The Counterfeit Queen. 

 Reason 1: Procrastination.

 Reason 2: Thinking it wasn’t going to be good enough.

 Reason 3: Having to work at it completely on my own instead of with the person who’d been my idea-helper and idea-processor, plot-hole-checker, proof-reader, dismisser of unworkable or silly ideas, as well as being someone against whom I’d sometimes had to battle in order to bring storylines I wanted to include.  

 In spite of these reasons for an overlong gestation, the book got written and is now published.

 In spite of not having someone to bounce ideas against, I was still able to use that same approach when it came to working on my own. Countless words got written as notes and thoughts and possibilities, so that I acted as my own thought-bouncer, plot-hole-checker, dismisser of silly ideas, etc. In fact I was confidently able to put two drafts aside completely, each consisting of several chapters, before finding the right approach to the story.

 And the book is twice as long as my previous three children’s fantasies, to my surprise.

 Were those five years wasted? No…

 I learned that I could manage to write a book on my own, by determining to do it.

 I found that the book was good enough.

 I found that procrastination can be overcome.

More about procrastination, and my approach to writing in general - kind of pantser, but different - in future posts. 

Painting of Russian writer Evgeny Chirikov - by Ivan Kulikov