This whole writing career thing has already got me down, and my book isn’t even out yet!

Sigh, I've been finding it very hard to write a novel ever since I sold my book. I finished the first draft of Everyone Hates You (my MG novel) in June of 2014, and even that was like a miracle (I found it SO difficult to write that book), but ever since then I've spent roughly 50% of my time trying to write a new book--any book--and have as yet not managed to finish anything. It's gotten a little depressing. I'm sure this is temporary, but for now it sort of sucks. I feel like I've been working on this forever, and my book isn't even out yet! The prospect of a lifetime of this is not looking attractive at the moment. I miss my old fluidity. My work might not've been great, but at least I could write it!

I'm happy I wrote those stories at Burning Man. That at least is something I rediscovered. For even the year before I sold my book I'd been finding short stories to be increasingly difficult. Maybe this augurs well for the future. Perhaps in a year or so I'll break through and novels will be doable (not easy, just doable) again. Oh well. Just going to keep working. Please don't offer me any advice. So much of the advice people leave on this blog is a bit banal, "Take a break!" or "Just push through it!" I've done both of those things. Nothing works. The cold truth is that there's no simple way to write a good book. Every November, tens of thousands of people "just push through it" and write terrible books. Every year, millions of people in this world will "take a break" and then never write again. The only real advice is to keep trying and hope that something happens.