What Was I Thinking?

Yes. This is the question I ask myself each and every time I get a new contract.

WTF, Dakota?

And then I ask--Who (I know it should be whom, but really, do you talk to yourself like that in your head?)the hell did you think you were kidding when you thought you could write a book?

You know how this all starts? It all starts with my big mouth and my even bigger ideas. It goes like this: Dear Agent, OMG—I have this awesomely, fantastical, never before seen idea that will make you laugh and laugh and I don’t mean at me.

Agent emails back (and I’m sure she when she does it’s just because I can be like an annoying gnat, all up buzzing in your head) and says—Well, it’s options time (options means I’ve fulfilled my last contracts. Wherein I’ve already forgotten the promise I made to myself that I’d never do this shit again), whaddya got?

I email back my brilliance to her in one hundred words or less concept style.

She emails back and tells me I’m only sorta brilliant because I need to do XYZ to make my sorta brilliant really brilliant.

I do XYZ to the sorta brilliant and send it to her in about a chapter’s worth of brilliance because for whatever reason, in order to get the feel of things, I need to flesh the idea out. Then she giggles. I giggle because she giggled. Everybody’s effin’ giggling. She goes off to pitch it to my editor. I wait in an utter state of hysteria, gnawing my nails to the quick. I moan. I fret. I wander the house with greasy hair in an old T-shirt and fast because if I eat, I’ll yark.

But then…

Apparently, my editor giggled, too. I mean, I think she did. I dunno. Maybe she had a couple drinks beforehand and she was already giggly. All I know is she bought it. So my agent calls to tell me.

Squeeing ensues. During said squeeing, I’ve forgotten all about my pact to never go back to “OMG-landia what are you going to do now?” I email my BFF’s. They squee, too. I tell my twelve fans. I’m not sure if they squee. I think it’s rather a collective moan.

I celebrate and buy myself a “Yay, you did it” pat on the back I-Pex bra. Or sometimes I go whole hog and get two.

So agent hashes out da moolah and then…

I have to write what I thought was so brilliant—which, I might add, was not either brilliant. It was horseshit. It’s all horseshit.

That’s the next thing I say to myself when I finally sit down to write this genius concept that I spent all of twenty minutes hatching like the fool I am. Because here’s the thing, it’s all fun and games when all you have to do is say, “Wouldn’t it be funny if?” and you lie your way through a proposal. You know, like me.

It’s not so funny when you’re a pantzer like me who abuses the English language as it comes to her versus being a smart writer and plotting it all out in advance.

Yeah. I have a vague idea of what I want to do with the book as a whole. But it’s so vague, it’s like invisible, and it takes foreverandafrickin’day for me to get from point A to point B.

So there I sit with my one stupid chapter and a brief synopsis of what’s “supposed” to happen. I read it over and over, praying it’ll jar something—anything that I can turn into a story.

I cry. I call my BFF’s and cry. They listen to me cry. Someone usually passes me a tissue. I talk it out. They let me talk it out, with the occasional “Shut up, Dakota” mingled amongst their supportive poor babies.

And then something happens. I don’t know what. I don’t know how. It just does, and all of a sudden, I can’t shut the eff up and neither can my fingers.

And that’s where I’m at right now. I can’t shut the eff up. It’s also the time I think I wouldn’t have this crazy job of mine any other way.

Until the next book, that is :)