The interminable wait for an agent to respond.
The Black Book is out there, possibly lying dormant in a slush pile instead of in the wilds of my imagination, which feels both impossible and unfair.

Now I’ve taken a week off. Left The Black Book alone entirely. Tinkered a couple of thousand words on a 2017 manuscript which doesn’t really have anything other than 56 thousand words and a pitiful holding title. It’s something to do with a keyboard and a blank page, which still feels better than watching my inbox remain stubbornly empty of agent replies.

And here, at the end of the first third of November, Novel Writing November, I have begun the sequel to The Black Book, because the character is there, wondering how to extract himself from the cliffhanger at the end of the first book, and I am clamouring to write his consternation.

There are 1,618 words now.
They break into his world again, illustrating his physical and emotional struggles and I am hooked.

It’s 2am. I have to be up at 7am to get my youngest off to school.
There’s the day job, and some self-care, and recovery before I can reset and immerse myself back in this world of psychological torment. But even as I tell myself to sleep, I’m still listening for him, my character, for his thoughts, his voice, his next move.

This is what it’s like, sending a book out into the world.
Part of you is waiting, suspended in the quiet between inbox refreshes. The rest of you is already halfway back in, rebuilding the world you swore to leave alone.

The Black Book might be lying dormant somewhere in the slush pile, but in here, in these few pages and sleepless hours, it’s alive again.