THE PROCESS

I make my living by making things up. Writers love to talk about what that's like. Stephen King alone has written like ten books with writer protagonists, as well as a fabulous book about the writing process (On Writing - and if you haven't read it and have any interest in wordsmithing for a living, GET IT.)

I've got a billion metaphors I like to drop when talking about writing stuff. (it's like building a skyscraper! It's like carving a marble sculpture! It's like climbing a mountain! It's like a [insert cliché about something that's really hard and takes a long time to do]!) All rather banal, but I finished the first draft of my fourth novel this week and it has me thinking about process stuff, and how it was particularly difficult to do my job during the pandemic era. (Is eighteen months and counting an era? I'd say so. That's like ten percent of my life!)

This fourth novel is late. I signed the deal to write it before the pandemic hit, just before my second novel ANYONE landed on shelves, around November 2019. I still had LIGHT OF THE JEDI to finish and edit and turn in, but I was confident that I'd be able to do that and get Novel 4 done as well - I had a pretty generous window of time built in for everything I had on my docket.

Generous, that is, in the Old World.

Trying to create during the pandemic, especially its first six months, was BRUTAL. It's better now, just because - I'd guess - we've all gone through the phases of (a) not doing anything; (b) trying to make our creative process work the way it used to; (c) realizing it really doesn't; (d) not doing anything; (e) trying new approaches; (f) figuring out what works in the New World; (g) doing things again under the new paradigm. (a) through (d) up there ate a ton of time, and it started to be like that damn ship in the Suez Canal. The minute one thing is late, everything stacked up behind it gets late, and the ripple of that disruption runs out across your whole writing life. This particular metaphor works two ways - because there's an Ever Given of the schedule, and an Ever Given of the mind.

In order for the process to work the way it's supposed to, you need a certain amount of clarity. Uncertainty clouds the mind, makes it hard to generate the new ideas and the connections between those ideas that become good stories. During the pandemic, especially its beginning, it was very difficult to know which way I'd have to jump next in my own life. Could I actually plan a week of writing, or would I have to budget in a bunch of time to, I dunno, disinfect my mail? You get it. Everyone reading this had some variation on the exact same experience.

Anyway, Novel 4 is late, but Novel 4 exists, and I'm very happy with what I have so far. It's very ambitious, hopefully not needlessly ambitious. There were definitely moments (especially during the big, period-set middle section) where I asked myself why Past Charles had decided to write something like this. But now that I can print a draft and look at it and think about how to make it better, I'm proud of the Past Charles who came up with this insane idea, the Past Charleses who kept going to get it done no matter how jammed up that mental Suez Canal got, and I'm proud of Future Charles who will keep building the skyscraper/carving the marble/climbing the mountain until Novel 4 is not just done, but done.

I also probably need to forgive myself a bit. Writers aren't always great at that. In the last eighteen months, I have:

--Written, revised, edited and released a #1 New York Times bestselling novel, LIGHT OF THE JEDI
--Written the first draft of my follow-up novel
--Ran a very successful Kickstarter campaign with my pal Ryan Browne for an omnibus of my fabulous series CURSE WORDS
--Was the ongoing writer for Marvel's STAR WARS comic series
--Conceived and coordinated and wrote and launched WAR OF THE BOUNTY HUNTERS, a pretty damn cool Star Wars crossover comic that's killing it sales-wise
--Continued making my Image Comics ongoing UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY with Scott, Cammo, Matt, Leo, Crank! and Will
--Was nominated for an Eisner Award for UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY
--Got my next two creator-owned comics ready (including writing a bunch of them) - the first is HELL TO PAY with Will Sliney, and the second is my CURSE WORDS follow-up with Ryan Browne; you'll see both in 2022
--Kept building Star Wars: The High Republic alongside my Project Luminous cohorts
--Wrote EYE OF THE STORM; my next story in The High Republic
--Wrote the pilot for the TV adaptation of ANYONE through several revisions
--Co-wrote the screenplay for the UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY film with Scott Snyder
--Did something very cool you'll hear about in 2022
--Did something very cool you might never hear about but I'm still glad I did
--Planned for something else very cool you'll hear about in 2022 if not a bit before
--Handled all the personal stuff we all had to handle during this time
--Ran a lot of miles

There's more, too, but I think that's enough to support the point I'm making. In the day, you can feel like you're way behind and not accomplishing anything and you're stuck in that goddamn canal and letting down everyone who depends on you - I guarantee I did - but when you look back, maybe you did more than you thought.