So, at the gentle prodding of my editor at Bloomsbury, I am starting my very first adult novel. As in not children’s or young adult. Big people. My age. Engaging in adult-type of activities like dating and marriage and child-rearing and car insurance. That kind of thing. When she first mentioned it to me, I stared at her blankly and then said, “Me? I don’t know anything about being an adult.” She laughed. And then she told me to write about exactly that.

So I have begun.

The fact that I am absolutely terrified about it is, I hope, a good thing. Fear has always motivated me more than anything else. I’ve been asking a writer friend of mine who also writes young adult and has recently completed her second adult novel, what the major difference between the two is. She said there really isn’t one, except for the character’s ages, and that if the story is compelling enough and the characters believable, I don’t have to worry about anything else. I do have this nagging fear though, that I still haven’t “learned” enough yet to be writing an adult novel. Most days I feel as though I am still wading through these incredibly murky waters of adulthood, parenthood, marriage. Some days I’m not even wading. I’m floundering, struggling to keep my head above the water.

Despite all this, I am about a third of the way through a draft I have been stewing about for months now - and it feels awful. Horrible, even. Kurt Vonnegut said that most day when he sits down to write he feels like an “armless, legless man.” That’s pretty much how I feel. I’m in the throes of First Draft Horror. I’ve got to trust that I will come out the other side - and that when I do, maybe, just maybe, I’ll have something to start with.

Hey, now that I think about it, maybe that was a pretty grown-up thought after all.

Onward!

CG

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