Maybe more experienced writers have less trouble with this. Perhaps practice makes it easier. I’m not sure. But in my experience so far, book two in the series I’m working on has been much harder to write than book one. While I became stuck a couple of times in book one, the scenes pushed to be written. When I arrived at the climax, I could barely concentrate that whole week with the urge to write nonstop.
Book two has been a completely different writing experience altogether. From the first word, I have had to work to get the words to come. My word count has slowed to a crawl because I spend twice as much time laboring over the words than I did on book one. I am currently at the climax and all I can do is stare at the page unable to force a word to come out.
Part of the trouble is that book two is more intense than book one. In book one, I introduced the characters and began their character and physical journeys. They were pushed, but not with the amount of difficulties I throw at them in book two. At times, the scenes became so intense I had to stop writing because I was beginning to get sick to my stomach or cry along with the characters. I had to walk away for a while to catch my breath.
I don’t have a lot of experience writing sequels. I wrote several sequels years ago, back before I knew much about writing and they were never longer than about 30k words. This current sequel is the first full-length sequel I’ve ever tackled.
Do more experienced writers struggle with writing book two? Have any of you experienced the same feeling with book two?
Tricia Mingerink 
I’m still on book one, so I have no idea if that will happen to me. However, I have all the books in my trilogy plotted out and book two and three are definitely more intense.
Even on my current WIP I’m certainly no fast writer. I have to think about how I want to word my sentence before I write it, so it’s pretty slow going.
I tell myself that means I’ll hopefully have less editing, but who knows? 🙂
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I have all three books in my trilogy planned out also. I’m a fast reader and a fast writer (I wrote book 1 in thirteen weeks), but I do have a lot of editing to do, including whole scenes that I know I have to add because I skipped them in the first draft.
Thanks for continuing to follow my blog. Keep at it with your first draft! Your logline sounded really fascinating on Go Teen Writers! Then again, I like almost anything with pirates in it! 🙂
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Thanks! I checked out your WIP and they look like my kind of books. 🙂
Do you have a critique group? I’ll be looking for one as soon as I finish my first draft and no one I know is a writer, sadly.
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Sierra, I don’t have a critique group yet. I have a couple of close friends who help me edit my work. I’d love to read over your first draft when you’re done with it. We can start our own little critique group. 🙂
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Sounds awesome! Thanks so much for offering! I’d love to read yours as well. 🙂
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