I finally signed my book contract. Since it’s the culmination of a lifelong dream, you’d figure I’d be in absolute bliss.
And I am. Sort of.
Once a goal is achieved, it’s my nature to think of the next one. The immediate next goal is making this a kick-butt book. But the clock runs out on that endeavor on June 15th, the day I am contractually obligated to turn in my final draft. My yearning heart needs a longer-term, more impossible goal than that. It’s just how I’m wired. The day I stop yearning for more is the day I curl up into a ball and turn inert.
After the final edit, the selling begins. My head is swimming every day (all day) with all the book promotion things I’m going to do to give my book its absolute best start in life. I have waited all these long years for this to begin and I will do anything to give my writing career a solid lift-off.
After that it’s selling my next book, which is already half written. It bums me out a bit to know that that probably won’t happen until the end of this year at the earliest (yep,there is something in the contract about that). I want it now, immediately, and the next and the one after that too. I want to know I am on the path to my writer’s life.
I have about 5 books outlined, books I’m already in love with, ideas I’d love to move in with and explore, the way writing a book requires. It is intimate and romantic,this falling in love with an idea, trying it on for size, getting to know it, knowing it’s molding itself to you too. It breaks my heart to know I have to do other things with my life besides that. There it is, I think, the deeper yearning, to be in a wonderful room somewhere, just my fast typing fingers and me, pouring myself out on the screen until I’ve said my piece. I wonder if I’ll ever have enough of it.
So, yes, my contract is signed. It’s glorious and banal all at the same time. And all it says to me is… what’s next?