The Blank Page

I'm at something of a creative impasse these days.

On one hand, a year after completing the manuscript, I now have a polished version of "The Ghost of Lake Emily" sitting on the hard drive and ready for submission. Which isn't a huge milestone since I felt it was pretty solid to begin with, but there were a few things that needed to be updated and consolidated and cut. Making those changes wasn't a huge issue, but hammering out a query letter was. I don't know if I've gotten into the query process much here, but just in case not here's the short version: The query is a letter you send to an agent asking them to take you on as a client so your book has a better shot at being published. This letter serves two purposes: (1) Make your book sound so compelling that Agent X absolutely has to check it out, and (2) offer some kind of proof that you can actually string coherent sentences together so they know they are dealing with someone who is taking the endeavor seriously.

Writing a letter that does these things is no ride around the lake, but I think I've got one in place now that could get the job done. I've researched up some agents and have sent the first round of 'Emily' queries out, so there's not much more to do but wait. BUT. I still have more than half of my summer left, technically. I could get some serious writing done in that time, and there's no reason I shouldn't. Except that I'm hung up. I wouldn't call this writer's block so much, because the story I want to begin has been coming together in my head for years now, but I just can't get it off the ground because I'm too busy second-guessing myself with it. When you begin writing and you look at that blank page, whether it's in a notebook or a typewriter or a brand new Pages document (or, God help us, friggin' Microsoft Word), it's kind of daunting.

If I was going to tell a student how to get past this, I'd tell them to just start writing. It's not going to be perfect on the first try so there's no sense worrying about quality since you'll have to revise it anyway. Yeah, well. Easier said than done. I figure my best play at this point is to get out one of the middle-grade / YA novels I brought home from school and just read. If it turns out to be good, that's usually enough to kickstart my brain. Trouble is I'm reading a non-fiction book right now, "War" by Sebastian Junger. With a cousin in Afghanistan, I thought it would be interesting to read a book by an acclaimed journalist who spent a great deal of time embedded with the military in Afghanistan. A tip for anyone out there who knows someone in Afghanistan and is thinking, "Hmm, yeah, that might be kind of interesting." Trust me - you'd rather not have your questions answered, at least from reading this book. No punches pulled whatsoever.

Very compelling, but not the type of writing that gets your wheels turning for writing a vaguely sci-fi middle grade novel.