The Differences Between Your First Book and The Other Ones.

Random Climbing Picture for funsies. Porcupine Crack at the New (I think).

First Draft:

First Book: Is this idea any good?
Subsequent Books: Let's see where this goes.

First Book: This stuff is awesome!
Subsequent Books: It's total crap.

First Book: It's crap. I give up.
Subsequent Books: It's crap. I'll fix it in revisions.

First Book: upon completion: pfft. Run spell-check on this bad-boy and call up Oprah, I just wrote a novel!
Subsequent Books: upon completion: *puts in a proverbial drawer* *goes to think about how to fix it for at least a month*

Chapter Breaks:

First Book: End a chapter at the end of a scene. Duh.
Subsequent Books: Split the chapter in a point of tension to keep the reader turning the pages.

First Book: How long should a chapter be?
Subsequent Books: Is that even a question people ask?

Dialogue:

First Book: I have so many passive verbs in my dialogue. I need to edit it!
Subsequent Books: All rules are off in dialogue.

Passive Verbs:

First Book: What's a passive voice? *Googles* Okay. I need to edit out all my uses of was/is/be.
Subsequent Books: A passive voice is defined by the subject receiving the action of the sentence, not necessarily the verb.

Beta Readers:

First Book: Please check my grammar. I'm so worried about my grammar. And my commas.
Subsequent Books: Does this keep you reading? Hold your interest?

First Book: Oh someone wants to read my book! Yay!!! Oh happy day!
Subsequent Books: *goes to snoop over their creds to see if they'll be useful before replying*

First Book: Silence? I didn't even notice. I'm sure they love it.
Subsequent Books: Each day I don't hear, I die a little more inside with the amount of revision I'll have to do.


Query Letter Writing:

First Book: Oh, a query? No big deal.
Subsequent Books: Query Letter Hell. For realz.

First Book: All I need is a great query and I know the agent will love my book.
Subsequent Books: I need a great query, killer first pages and a book that keeps the agent reading late at night.

Overall:

First Book: Am I a good writer?
Subsequent Books: Am I a good story-teller?

On Failure:

First Book: I can't fail!
Subsequent Books: Failure is one step along the road.