When your heart’s not in it

I pulled out Grimaulkin, draft 3, and gave it to someone to read. “Other than the gay parts,” he said, “I loved it.” And he gave me the reasons what did and didn’t work, so I wrote them down and I plan on rewriting that one.

War Mage, because I’ve been staring at it for about a year now, I’m sick and tired of. I know where I want the story to go, but when I sit down with it, I say to myself, “Meh, I don’t want to do this anymore.” Because of my ADD, I want to dump it and move on to something else. But with this one, I can’t. I have fans! I have people who have actually paid to read the first book in the series, who are waiting for the second book to either answer questions or continue on where I left off. I have a duty, an obligation, to continue the series.

But I’m so frustrated with how the rewrite’s going, how I’m consolidating characters and shoehorning other characters, how I’m deleting scene after scene and rewriting or inserting new scenes…I want to toss the whole thing and work on something else. Like Grim.

Duty to my fans vs. boredom.

I’m sure a lot of other professional writers run into this issue. Do you write to the market or write to the heart? Is it true that if you do what you love the money will come? I personally don’t think so. If that were the case, I’d be rich by now.

I’m going to finish this scene, then do the fun things I want to do. (I’m procrastinating while I write this blog, doncha know.)

Next comes Jagermeister which I’m going to give to my captive audience, I’m going to have to severely rewrite it, though. I read through the first few pages and saw typical first-time writer issues that I avoided with the other two books. I know my captive audience is not going to like it.