June was not my most productive month. Went to two week-long conferences, and, from a productivity standpoint, that is two too many.

However, now I am back home, and am trying to get work done. Today I finished a draft of my proposal for my next book (yes, another proposal…writing your second book is such a saga, even when you’ve already sold it!)

Now I’m going to try to do some revisions on the middle-grade novel that I wrote LAST June. I’ve been dragging my feet on this one for ages. I’m really going to need to learn faster turn-around times if I’m going to do this author thing.

I’ve been having anxiety regarding this writing thing. I haven’t finished a novel since last June. Of course for much of that time I was working on revisions for Enter Title Here, but still, it feels like a very long and very unproductive period. All of this revision is okay and all, but I’m really excited to start working on something NEW.

At this point, though, I’m not sure when I’ll get to that.

If my proposal goes through, then I’ll need to write that book, which I think is going to be fun. But that book is just a rewrite of a book that I’ve already written, so I feel like there’s a lot less excitement in that than I’d like there to be.

A novel is an amazing thing. It’s an entire universe. You can write literally anything in a novel. And whatever you write becomes so real. When I think of the books I’ve written, each one seems amazing to me. Like, all these worlds came out of nowhere and then became such a big part of my life.

I miss that experience–the experience of being in the grip of something NEW. But it’ll come again, I suppose.