When Should I Start Book Two?

(reposted from Grub Street’s Friday Five-O)

“I keep wondering when I should start book two. Should it be when book one is done? When I find an agent or a publisher?”

—Play it Again Sam

Dear Sam,

That is an excellent question. It presupposes, if I may, that you have an idea for book two. Congratulations! Ideas like that, for things that are as long as a book, should be celebrated when they arrive.

Let’s say you have a good idea for book two. This just happened to me, about three months ago. I know what my next book is going to be (a prequel to the book on revision, applying The Book Architecture Method to creation). When I got my idea, it came with an uprush of information about its content, and then it went quiet.

Recording your ideas is enough to suspend them in time.

For God’s Sake, Sam, tell me you have a journal? Tell me that when a phrase or a paragraph comes to you, you have a place to write them down? In your dayplanner, on a smart phone, or in something lavishly bound… Wherever the tidbit goes, when the prompter speaks, you have to make a note of it. That is enough to suspend your ideas in time.

Keeping track of your notes is important.

Right now I could find those notes on my book two. I could also find the notes for three short stories which I know I must write at some point. Finding the time for this is another question, but ideas either go away or they don’t.

If you keep good notes, and remember where they are, you are for all intents and purposes ready. As to when you start, which is what you asked, I hope you appreciate an informative non-answer as much as I do! I don’t know. When your agent, your partner, your neighbor, your publisher, or most powerfully, one of your readers, asks for it?

Or alternately, when you know it is time to commit your soul completely to seeing something through to the end. That’s a perfect time.