Searching for My Next Book Idea

Well, I have been stuck, mired in discouragement about the current state of children's book publishing (like every other children's book author I know) and mildly disappointed in the world's reception to my beautiful new book, Calliope Callisto Clark and the Search for Wisdom, which has received lovely reviews, but not the kind of critical adoration we all secretly, or not so secretly, crave. 

I haven't been writing. I don't know what to write. I don't know what the world wants me to write. I don't know what I want me to write.

When I'm not writing, I'm not happy. And when I'm not happy, my sweet partner has a hard time being happy, too. 

Something needed to be done. And David took it upon himself to do it.

He told me I needed to start going to my writing nook again, early in the morning, for that sacred hour timed with my beloved hourglass. Of course, I knew that. But sometimes we hear it better when someone else says it. I needed just to START WRITING. Or as Anne Lamott says, I needed to STOP NOT WRITING.

"But WHAT should I write?" I wailed.

"Tomorrow morning you will find five sheets of paper waiting for you in the nook," he said mysteriously.

And so I did. 

On the top of each blank page, printed in his big capital letters, were words to start me brainstorming, words that showed his understanding of exactly the kind of book I, Claudia Mills, like to write.

LOW STAKES PROBLEMS FEEDING HIGH STAKES EMOTIONS

MORAL COMPLEXITY

COURAGE/PERSONAL GROWTH

BELONGING    LONELINESS   

SELF-DISCOVERY

Beside them on the table was a stout red candle and a book of matches. It was time to light that single candle rather than sit and curse the dark. It was time to start scribbling random little notes in my teensy-weensy writing. 

The words came pouring out.

Then came delicious hours of distilling dozens of possible ideas from those five sheets of paper. Then distilling those dozens down to the ten most promising. Then, almost blindly, willy-nilly choosing just ONE, or allowing just ONE to choose me.

I've now made almost 30 pages of notes for this idea and written three short chapters. As always happens, now I'm not sure it is the ONE. I am beset with self-doubt. But it feels so good to be writing! To be writing anything! Anything at all! 

Begone, self-doubt! I am going to continue to cover page after page with teensy-weensy writing. (I love teensy-weensy writing!). Whatever becomes of these pages, I am finding joy in writing them. So there!