116: How to Write Your Second Book

 

In many ways, writing your second book is easier -- although that doesn't mean it's always smooth sailing. This episode covers my own experience with writing my second book plus what lessons you can take with you from other things you've written. 

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how to write your second book

Hi, friends, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm Katie Wolf, this is your big creative life. And we're going to be talking about writing your second book. But I think a lot of the things that we talked about in this episode are going to apply to you who writing like, third, fourth, fifth sixth book. It's not so much that it is how but it's not how it because the second book is just write it. There's not like some magical thing that you have to do with your second book that you don't do with your first book. But I'm going to talk about my own experience writing my second book, and now starting to write something new when my third book. And then also talk about just things that you can use tips you can use when it comes to writing your second book, some things that I think are good to reflect on and to implement with writing something new.

 

And the idea for this episode came from a DM that I got from someone on Instagram, and she said, we'd love to hear your own opinion on how starting something new feels when you already written completed pieces or books before. Also, what are your personal ins and outs on this project, this new project from the last one. And I thought that was such a good question and prompt for me to reflect on that I was like, Instagram stories are not enough for this, we have to do a podcast episode on it to talk about it. So I've written two novels, neither of which are published yet. And I've started a few other night I started three other books. But I'm committed to writing this new psychological thriller that I started, actually started it maybe a year and a half, two years ago. It's been a while but then I set it aside for a long time, because last year, I was really focused on revision to, to my second book, and just going through that process.

 

And so I didn't have a lot of bandwidth to work on something new. But now I'm back into it. And it feels so good and so exciting. But it's different. Like everything that I write is different. Before I wrote those novels, I wrote some short stories, I wrote a few personal essays, or a few articles like so the experience of writing anything is different. And what's so cool about the more that you write, the longer that you write is you really start to hone in on a couple of things, you start to hone in on your personal process. In terms of your writing routine, you also start to really get clear on your preferred outlining method. And there's also a lot of roadblocks that you can encounter on your first book that afterwards when you're writing your second, third, fourth, etc. You know what to expect, you know that these mindset things are going to come up, you know that these plot issues are going to come up and it doesn't feel so heavy and earth shattering like it can when you're writing your first book. And my experience. Basically, the way to sum it up is to say something that I say all the time, which is you learn how to write a book by writing a book.

 

Yes, you can take classes, yes, you can do all kinds of things to learn and research and gather knowledge about the craft of writing. And all of that is super important. I talk all the time about how I'm how much I love writing classes and how important those are. But when it comes down to it, the way that you figure out how to write a novel, is to actually do it learning by doing. It's the best way to do it. So that is why sometimes people can fall into like analysis, paralysis, or just feeling like they're in research mode forever, that they're learning how to write. They're reading books about the craft, they're taking writing classes, they're listening to podcasts like this. They're watching YouTube videos, all the things, but they they put off the actual writing part because it's like, Oh, I've got to figure all these things out, I have to learn how to write dialogue first.

 

And I have to learn how to develop characters first, and how to write a compelling plot and all of these things, which, yes, do some research, of course. But ultimately, the way that you improve and the way that you get better and figure those things out for yourself is by doing all of those things. And that was so true. In my experience, I learned so much from writing my first book, stuff that has stayed with me and I brought into every new thing that I've written since and also into my work with clients because I remember what it was like to start writing that first book to get I remember what it was like getting halfway through and hitting a huge stumbling block. And honestly wrestling with whether I should just scrap the book and try something else because I couldn't make a decision on something related to the characters and it just I remember all of those things.

 

So, in turn just like writing a second book, if you have written your first book, then you know how much you learned from that experience, you know how you've gathered a lot of data about your own particular writing style, your writing voice, your process, your preferred, maybe your preferred outlining method. Honestly, this is my third book, and I'm still not totally sure what my preferred outlining method is. And by that, I just mean like, what are you someone who wants to do a lot of outlining or not. And you could certainly try different things with everything that you write my first book, I did some outlining and some brainstorming. And then I ran into that big issue that I mentioned, where initially, I had planned for the book to be three point of view characters.

 

So I would need a roughly about a third of the book for each point of view character, and it was women's fiction, I started writing it and realized that there was absolutely no way I was going to be able to pull that off, because I needed to devote a lot more time to one character story in particular, it just wasn't going to happen. And so then I had planned for these three point of view characters and scrapped one of them I scrapped, it was going to be a mother, her daughter, and then her mom, so granddaughter, a mother and a daughter. And I scrapped the grandmother because I just, I couldn't really think of what to include in her point of view. And I realized I didn't actually want to have it, I didn't need it. So that I had to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to flesh out the characters and the plot points that I had already to change the story to just be to point of view characters.

 

So and it also, I wrestled with the ending of that book a lot. So once I got done with that book, and I started writing my second book, I was like, Okay, this time, I'm gonna go all in on outlining, because I don't want to have that same mistake. So with my second book, I looked at save the cat, which is an outlining method that's pretty in depth, and it talks about all these different beats, or these different plot points that you have to hit along the way. Not telling you what the plot points are, obviously, but just certain things that kind of have to have happen for the book to have this kind of satisfying arc, right. And it takes a lot of principles from screenwriting, which is helpful, it really was helpful for me, but there's a big learning curve, I found the Save the cat, it's a book if you want to check it out. And it just, what I ended up doing is I outlined almost down to the chapter level, I think what was going to happen with this book.

 

And in the initial outline, my main character was an 18 year old girl. It started when she was finishing up high school, she got accepted to this college, and then the rest of the book took place her freshman year of college. So I outlined all these things that would happen, sort of writing it got about five or 10,000 words in and realize that I did not want to write from the perspective of a college student, I did not want to have my main character be 18 years old. And so that all that outlining that I did just kind of went out the window, because I was changing it really significantly. So I think going through that experience on May 2 book made me find kind of a hybrid approach for this book that I'm working on now. And I have about 10,000 words written of this new book. And I've done some outlining for sure. And I've done some character work to think about who my main characters are. But I'm leaving room for the plot to take me in a direction that I don't totally, I don't really know what it's going to be, there's some surprises in there, too.

 

Now, the other thing that was interesting about writing my second book is I initially told the line between two genres with that book, women's fiction, but also a thriller, and I couldn't decide. It's like I didn't want to commit fully to having this book be a thriller. So what ended up happening is once I got done with the rough draft, and even once I got through the second draft, I realized that it was just not thriller, free enough, there wasn't enough suspense. There were hardly any plot twists, I needed to do a lot of work to have it fit kind of genre conventions to make it suspenseful to make it to throw some red herrings in there to have a big payoff at the end, like all these things that I just didn't include in the first or second draft.

 

So going through that experience in my second book made me now that I'm writing another psychological thriller. Think about those things ahead of time. So I spent some time when I was brainstorming, thinking about who's the ultimate, you know, bad guy, who's it going to turn out to be? What is their master plan? What are some plot twists that I can throw in? And how is it going to impact these characters that I have at this event that takes place over five days? So that was an example of like learning from that last book? What to do but what not to do. So every time that you go through this, you are going to gather more data and more information about what to do and what not to do. And they're the kinds of things in my case, those were the kinds of things I mean, I wouldn't even call them mistakes, I'm putting I'm doing air quotes around the word mistakes, because it was a learning process.

 

It was like I had to go through that process in order to really understand how to write a thriller. And I intellectually, like when I'm if I'm editing someone else's work, of course, I understand all those things about thrillers. But when it comes to my own writing, I had some blind spots about those things. And isn't that always the case, we it's so much easier to spot issues in someone else's work than your own work. But I have to go through that process and sort of reverse engineer it after I had already finished the book. In order for me to now be at this place where I think about that stuff ahead of time, and how to create suspense and how to create tension in the book, instead of waiting until the end, which it worked out fine. I retroactively out of those things back in, but it did create more work for me.

 

So what I will say, if you are, if you've written your first book, already, you've crossed that bridge, you've crossed that hurdle. First of all, frickin huge congratulations, because that is a massive accomplishment. And that is so exciting. No matter what happened with your first book. Maybe it's sitting in a drawer somewhere, maybe it's being you in the self published it, maybe you are in the process of querying, maybe you're not sure yet you just have the book done, but you're not sure what you want to do. Regardless, it's a huge accomplishment to write a book, and I'm so proud of you. And that's frickin awesome. So when it comes to your second book, really take stock of what you learned in the process of writing your first book, in terms of your own personal approach, did you discover that your best time of day to write is in the morning? Did you discover that you work best doing 30 minute sprints as opposed to longer Sprint's or shorter, Sprint's? Did you discover that you get the first draft out really, really quickly, because you have a ton of momentum, but then editing takes you a really long time. All of that is, is neutral, it's not good or bad.

 

And you don't need to have judgment about your process, like, oh, gosh, it would be so much nicer if I were this kind of writer, or if I got my first draft out in two months, or whatever, whatever, whatever, you know, story, your brain is telling you about how you need to be better. Just let that go. All it is, is data points, you're just gathering information, looking at your experience of writing this first book. And maybe it was, maybe it was just all a blur, and you're like, I don't know how I did it. I don't really know what happened, I got that book done. Or, you know, maybe it's like me, you have the experience of okay, I know what not to do with my next book, because of what happened with my first book. All of that is great. And you can use all of that to inform what you do with your second book. Also, don't be afraid to try different things don't feel like just because you made this massive detailed outline for Book One, that you have to do the same for Book Two, or if you completely pants, but one to the point where like you just started writing and figured out the story completely as he went like you had no idea what the story was going to be. But you want to do something different and create a kind of detailed outline for a book to go for it. There are no rules about this there. There's no right or wrong way to do it. If you're writing you're writing. And that's amazing.

 

So don't feel like you have to stick to one particular method. Of course, if your method that you use for Book One is working, and you want to continue it, it's awesome. That's awesome. You know, think broke, don't fix it. But don't be afraid to experiment and try different things. I love hearing from writers, other writers what their process is for brainstorming, drafting, editing, all of that, because I find it interesting, and I want to peek into people's lives a bit and understand their process. But also because I'm always looking for for things that I can try. Sometimes I'll hear someone do something and I'm like, oh, that sounds good. I want to try that. I remember seeing a tick tock a few years ago that was someone who had a whole wall in her bedroom or a room in her house that was filled with post it notes like an entire wall was all these different color coded posts and notes. And I thought that was so cool. It was her brainstorming outlining kind of method before she started writing her book.

 

And I tried to do kind of a similar thing on my wall with the W outline which actually have an a podcast episode about the W outline that you can go check out if you want to. And it was good to come up with some for me to come up with some brainstorming to brainstorm some ideas that way but I ended up not really. I don't know going all the way through with that W outline Even though I did find it helpful, so yeah. But the point is, I'm just trying things, you know, I'm seeing what works. So don't be afraid to experiment and try and don't feel like you're locked into something just because you did it for your first book. Yeah, again, there are no rules, no one's looking over your shoulder and meet, you shouldn't feel like you have to do it a certain way. You can even do massively different things in terms of the software that you write with, like the tool that you use to write maybe even handwriting your next book, or using like a voice dictation tool to speak your book out loud. I don't know, just feel free to experiment.

 

This is kind of the fun of starting something new, I always get this rush at the beginning, where it's like, I'm so excited to dive in. And there's this this this like, endless world of possibility before me, which is so cool to think about exploring that. And the other reason I get so excited, which I've talked about this before, is that I haven't run into any problems yet. In the book, because it's all just, it hasn't been written yet. So everything's wonderful and magical. And I don't have any problems yet. And if I do encounter a problem in my mind, where I'm like, Oh, how am I going to resolve that? Or how is that going to work? It's like, oh, I don't have to worry about that yet, because I'm not there. So it feels really freeing and exciting to me. And my own personal process.

 

This is one more thing I have to share with you that I've learned in case you experienced this as well. It is so easy for me to start, well, I shouldn't say so easy, it's fairly easy for me to start a book. And to get about 8000 words in or so then once I get a few chapters in to the story, then the momentum really slows because then I'm in it. And then I start to realize that I have to seriously figure some things out, I can't just kind of like, throw spaghetti at the wall and take the plot and a rambling direction. I mean, I could go back and fix it later. But that's not what I like to do. So I know that that's part of my process, I knew that going into my second book that I was going to experience that which helped because then when I got to that eight or 10,000 word mark, and I started feeling kind of a bit sluggish, and like oh, some of the excitement is wearing off, I knew like just get over that hump, just keep going power through and it's going to pick back up, you will feel better eventually, once you get over this first initial hurdle. And the same thing is happening with this book, because I have about 10,000 words.

 

So I know I just have to keep going get over that slight hurdle, and then things are gonna get better and progress from there. Not that it's smooth sailing from 10,000 words till the end. But at least I get over that first hurdle. So if that happens to you, where you have all this momentum and excitement to start your book, and then it kind of like levels off of it after just No, that's totally normal. It's also totally normal. If it is very difficult for you to start your book. Maybe that was your experience writing your first book and you're worried it's going to be the same with book to it might be that might just be your kind of own, you know, thing to wrestle with or get through. It's not wrong, it's not bad. It's just a fact that you know about your process. So you can expect you can plan for that.

 

So when those feelings come up, you're like, Oh, I recognize this, I know what's happening. I also know that I can get through it. Part of the fun of starting something new is knowing that you can do it because you've done it before you have that proof, you have that evidence that you have written a book before. Whereas when you're just starting you, you don't know that you can write a full book until you do it. So there's something cool about writing subsequent books where like, you know, it's going to be hard and messy, and there will be stumbling blocks. But you know that you can do it, because you've done it before. So I hope this was helpful if you're starting your second book, or thinking about it. Good luck. Again, you've done it before, you can do it again. And you have complete freedom to change how you do things, or to keep them exactly the same. If that's working for you. It's really totally up to you.

 

I feel like I will continue to experiment with every book that I write and try something may be different because I've gathered more data about myself and my writing process and learned more lessons, the more that I keep doing this, which is really cool. It's really cool to see that evolution. So all right, good luck with book number two or three or four, whatever book you're on, and I'll see you next week. Bye.

Katie Wolf