More House

I´m new. My first novel is due out in the spring. It´s called More House. On this blog I´d like to record the process of publishing -- what it feels like, what it involves, what I learn along the way, the things that annoy me, the things that please me.

At the moment I am completing an Author Questionnaire. Most of the questions are not questions a writer can answer very honestly -- how does your book differ to other books in its field? for example. I see an array of different influences, most of them not literary, that have helped me to write better, but I don´t have the necessary objectivity to be able to compare what I´ve written to what somebody else has written.

Today I received an email from a fellow writer who warned me of the dangers of speaking too freely during an interview. For him, just mentioning that he was listening to Hendrix on the day of an interview meant that for years afterwards his work was compared to Hendrix´s music. I think his advice is good, but knowing *when* someone is going to take your words and stretch the hell out of them, is not so easy.

Although getting published is mostly a confidence-boosting pleasure, it also has its risks. Knowing that once More House is out there it won´t be mine anymore, scares me. Knowing that reviewers can write anything they feel like writing, also scares me. But, once you have written a novel, if you do not get it published it hangs over you like a dark cloud and blocks the flow of new writing projects. I guess, then, that the risk of being criticized and misinterpreted is a small price to pay for the luxury of being free to write once again on a clean slate.