Writing Ain't for the Weak, Folks

 This morning, I was driving down the road thinking about books.

Yep, I do that sometimes.

More specifically, I was thinking back to the time before I really became a writer. (I say that because I've always written stories, I just never considered publishing as an actual career until, one day, God whacked me upside the head... But that's another story.) Back them, I would read a book, love a book, set aside a book, and pick up another book.  Ah, lost in another world. How wonderful! Books are awesome and amazing! They take me to new places! They teach me new things! I love books!

And then I became a writer.

Oh, I still love books, but I look at them in a whole new way now.  

So, as I was driving today, I was thinking about how books are put together and how much goes in to what we pick up off a shelf or download onto our e-readers.  Here's a little glimpse behind the scenes.

There are books that just flow. We sit down, we write, we revise, we edit, some publishing things happen, and readers read. Those books rock. 

And then there are other books. Y'all, I am not joking when I say I see a massage therapist twice a month because I'm a writer. I saw mine yesterday, and I loved her more than ever before because I had just spent two solid weeks hunched over my laptop, revising a book that doesn't even have the final three chapters written yet.  Why? A perfectly normal thing happened.  My editor said, "Hey, I love this idea, but can you change this one thing?" It was a good request from her, because changing that one thing will make the book better. I am down with making the book better every time.

But "one thing" is like dropping a rock into a pond. It makes ripple effects. One thing meant every chapter had to be rewritten before I could write the ending. And it had to be done fast, because I need to write the ending. In about fourteen months, there will be a book on the shelves that someone will pick up and read... and they will never know that those words came at the expense of my neck and back for two weeks. :-)

And then I was thinking about my good friend/prayer partner/brainstorming buddy/encourager/all-around partner-in-making-trouble, Jessica Patch. She's working on a new book right now that I can promise you is going to knock your socks off when you get a chance to read it. Y'all.  I mean, Y'ALL. I can't wait until she's done, even though I already know how it's going to go. 

But can we talk about this book? It is twisty. It is turny. It flips the script on you. She had a whole first draft done.  

And then she decided it could be better. She has completely ripped this book apart. Like, chapter one no longer exists. A character has been completely removed. Chapter 4 is now chapter 13.  Chapter 13 is now chapter 6. I'm talking some serious reconstruction here. Every day, I get an update on what's different now. And let me tell you, it's even twistier and turnier and script-flippier than ever.  And one day, that book will be on the shelves or on e-readers, and anybody reading it will absolutely fall into this amazing, wild story, flipping pages until they forget to sleep at night. No one who reads it will ever know Jessica spent a whole lot of days looking like this:

Photo recreations of actual faces made during the revision process.
No writers were harmed in the taking of these photos.

So pray for us writers. We're probably somewhere ripping our favorite scenes apart as we cry into our coffee cups.  (Or maybe we're just taking fake agonized-face selfies of ourselves and sending them to our friends. You never know.)