In Which I Make a Confession That Makes Me Sound Like a Whackaloon

So, I've been writing, and I'll say more about that soon, promise-- but that's not what this post is about. This post is about a weird mental block I've been having for the last six months, that I haven't wanted to talk about because it makes me sound like a crazy person. But I think it's actually messing me up more than I'd like to admit, so I'm taking a deep breath and confessing:

My plan has always been to get back to work on Eleven Names as soon as I finish The Owl Bearer. EN is the next book in the series, after all. And it's the Book of my Heart: the core story is the one that launched me on this crazy spec fic journey nearly two decades ago.

From the very first NaNo draft of EN, I knew my main character Somi had a son, and that she lost her son when he was eight years old. He didn't die, but she lost him anyway. Then I had a son, and that son got older and older, and I started to feel a stab of irrational fear in my gut-- fear that I'd be punished for inflicting such a devastating plot point on my character. Fear that something awful would happen to my son on his 8th birthday. And as insane as this sounds, a part of me has not wanted to finish TOB, because then I would be writing EN while my own son is eight.

Stephen King once wrote that the only book that has freaked him out so badly he had to stop writing it was Pet Semetary, because the kids in the book were same sexes and ages as his own kids, they lived on a busy road, and he was constantly worried about their toddler getting hit by a truck. When he reached that scene in the book, he couldn't go on. He felt that by writing it, he would make it happen to himself. He had to put the book aside until his kids were older.

I think some of that is going on with me. Every time I sit down to work on TOB, I think of how I need to get back to work on EN as soon as its done.

Today is The Son's 8th birthday. And I really want to finish TOB. I am so, so close to being done.

So I have decided that I will not work on EN again for another year. I will finish TOB, and then I will work on the first book in a new series I have growing wild in my brain. New genre, new world... and none of my characters have kids.

Slinking off now...