Dear Jackie,

By the time you start writing your next novel, you will have forgotten a few things, and in those moments, I hope you’ll come back to this post and be reminded.

* Writing a novel is hard.  The beginning stages kind of suck.  You barely know your characters until you’ve written the whole first draft, and so for a couple months, you’re essentially writing blind.  You forget that.  In those difficult days of editing, you think longingly of the “carefree” days of freewriting, having forgotten that you felt completely lost and simultaneously terrified that you were wasting your time.

* This is just what it is like at the start of a new novel.  You feel lost and lonely, and every scene feels stilted and confused.  You haven’t yet figured out your character’s deep-seated desires, let alone their surface ones, and you certainly aren’t aware of their…