Illiterati: Book No. 2

Apparently as soon as you have one book published, or about to be published, people feel the need to start asking you what your next one is going to be about. This must be especially irritating if you're, say, Harper Lee and have written only one book and seem likely to write only the one. One, paricularly if it's To Kill a Mockingbird, should be enough for anyone. But maybe that first book *is* the problem, especially if it's been extremely successful.

I remember when I was in the middle of Deadline Hell, as that two-year period of my life between July 2003 and July 2005 was known, and speaking to Marilynne Robinson and another writer at a social function. Marilynne's second book, the much-waited-for Gilead (after the much-beloved Housekeeping), had just won the Pulitzer. The other writer, a good friend, said he was fretting that he was six months past his deadline. I (because I am always one to commiserate) one-upped him by saying I was a year and a half past mine. Then Marilynne chipped in with, "Well, I was twenty years late with mine."

Point taken.

My second book idea did not gel until very recently (and by very recently, I mean this weekend). The fact that this happened at the same time the first book is coming out, and that I have spent the last nine months writing nearly nothing, is not a mistake, I think. I had to let go of the first one--really let it go, watch it go out into the world on its own--in order to start truly getting my hands dirty with the second one.

I just hope it doesn't take me twenty years. Though if it's Gilead, maybe that would be worth the wait.