Work in progress

Besides publicity for my Simon Pulse book, ENDLESS SUMMER, which came out in May, and my MTV Books novel, FORGET YOU, which will be published on July 20, I am hard at work on my July 2011 MTV Books release, entitled THIS BOOK HAS SUCH A COOL TITLE IT WILL BLOW YOU AWAY or MY EDITOR HAS NOT DECIDED WHAT THE TITLE IS YET. The deadline for this book is August 1, but I'm trying to finish the first draft by June 25 and the second by June 30 so I'll have plenty of time to send it to my critique partners and think about it and stop myself from making some horrible glaring error before I turn it in to my editor.

Even so, I was thrown for a loop last week when my editor asked for the first two chapters to show to the sales force. I had the first two chapters, but they were nowhere near polished, and one of them needed a lot of research that I hadn't planned to do until later.

I did complete the research, polish the chapters, and turn them in last Monday. And part of me feels a lot better about this book now that the beginning is set in stone, sort of. But I really would have preferred not to let anyone see my work, even the very beginning of it, until I was finished writing the entire novel. Normally I would go back and make huge changes to chapter 1 after writing chapter 20, because I'm not absolutely sure what goes on in chapter 1 until then.

I don't write in order. I write some of the beginning, some of the end, some of the middle, a conversation three-fourths of the way through, back to the beginning, a hilarious scene three chapters in... In other words, I write the whole book at once, not a chapter at a time. I realize most people don't do this, and I have tried writing a book in order, with disastrous results. This makes it really hard for me to sell on proposal--writing the first three chapters and a synopsis of a book, selling it, and then finishing it. In fact, the only book I've ever sold that way was ENDLESS SUMMER, but that's because it was a sequel, so I already had those characters' voices in my head.

I feel like this is a real handicap for me. But hey, writing a novel is difficult work, and if I have a quirk while doing it, well, I'm afraid I'm going to have to live with it.

What about you? Does this writing process mess sound familiar or completely insane?