Sequelphobia

se·quel·pho·bia noun \sē-kwəl-fō-bē-ə\

An extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to writing sequels.

It’s legit. I swear. And if it’s not, I’m coining the phrase right now because I totally suffer from it. Writing a sequel is an entirely different ball game. If this manuscript were a first book I’d have it done already. Instead I’m staring at draft five, ready to rip my hair out and strangle my characters. 

I thought it would be a lot easier. I’ve had this story completely plotted out for years, and I know my characters in and out. So why is Jamie 2 giving me so many problems? I think it's because I’m scared of letting people down.  

Writing used to be a lot simpler back in the days when the only person who read my stuff was me. It’s really stressful to know that there are people out there who are waiting to read this book. People who are anxious and excited for it. What if, after all that waiting, they don’t like it? I would feel terrible. Not just because people don’t like my book—people hate on my books all the time; that’s to be expected—but because I know how much I hate it when I’m disappointed in a book. I don’t want to disappoint anyone.

I love Jamie and Ryan to bits and pieces, and I LOVE that other people love them as much as I do. I love that there are people out there who swoon over my characters the way I swoon over my favorite book characters. I can’t tell you how much it means to me when people write me asking about sequels.

Maybe my real problem is that I’ve never cared so much if my books turned out good as much as I do with this book. I want this book to be amazing. I want it to be everything that people are hoping for. I want to live up to all those expectations. I want my fans, who deserve the BEST because they are AWESOME, to get another book they can love as much as the first one.

No pressure, huh? It’s hard for me to separate Kelly the writer from Kelly the reader, and nobody is harder on second books than me. So, Kelly the writer is trying to finish this book and Kelly the reader is sitting here, reading over shoulder saying, “Nope. It’s not good enough. You can do better. Do it again." 

I am seriously stressing myself out.

Do I have issues? Yes. Yes I do. Right now I really do.

So…

e·piph·a·ny noun \ih-pif-uh-nee\  plural e·piph·a·nies.

A sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.

I have decided that my sequelphobia is a good thing. If I stress this much about this book and work this hard on it, then there’s no way it can totally suck by the time I’m finished. Right? Right. Draft five is definitely five times better than draft one anyway. Just think how good it could be by the time I'm on version five hundred. (Which at this rate, I will most certainly get to.) This book is going to ROCK. 

ANYWAY... 

Now that we've all experienced a little dose of Kelly's CRAZY... Happy New Year everyone! Here’s to me TOTALLY STOPMING my sequelphobia and writing a SERIOUSLY KICK BUTT sequel that is worthy of Jamie. She deserves awesomeness.

That is all. Now I'm off to feed Lucky Charms to my children for dinner because it's been a long week and I'm tired and my baby is sick and I don't want to cook.