Getting ahead of myself

 

I'm still in the process of editing book 1 in my series, and I've already started writing draft 2 of book 3! Why am I doing this to myself? It's distracting me from doing the work that I need to be doing right now.

And yet, it's not.

There were things I didn't realize I needed to include in book 1 until I started writing books 2 and 3. There were relationships I needed to set up and characters I needed to introduce. Things that were relevant to later parts of the story that I didn't want to just show up out of nowhere. I've read some book series (that shall remain nameless) that made the mistake of not introducing a very important plot point until the last book. It was jarring. Any attempt to figure out where the story was going was dashed by the late arrival of new information. I don't want to do that to my readers.

I try to at least outline my stories before I write them. But my outlines tend to get ignored by my characters. They take the story where they want it to go and I have to scramble to keep up. Once I know where the story is going, then I can go back and set it up so it makes sense to the reader. Sometimes that means going all the way back to the beginning (book 1) to set up something important that happens much later on (book 3).

I just started querying literary agents with book 1 of my potential 6 book series. Days after I sent out my first query letter, I realized what the major conflict would be for book 3 - something I'd been struggling with for over a year. Now I'm looking back at my already submitted manuscript to see if there's anything I need to change in order to set things up just right. Maybe I jumped the gun with sending out queries. I know I have time to change the manuscript - it hasn't even been accepted by an agent yet, let alone a publisher. I'm glad I have the time to work on it some more. I want readers to enjoy the whole series, not just book 1. It all has to work together.