“How is the thing with your book going?”

That’s what everyone I talk to in person wants to know, so maybe you do, too. Short answer—and I’m keeping it short on purpose for reasons I hope will be evident to you—it’s in someone else’s hands right now.

There’s not a single thing I should be doing except this:

I need to write another book.

Six words. “I need to write another book.” It’s like one of those six-word stories, an iceberg of a sentence of which you can only see the tip. But the depths, they are there. I need to write another book—and I haven’t started to do so.

It’s not for lack of ideas.

It’s not for lack of desire.

It’s not for lack of time.

I’m still waiting for the idea that zings through me like a lightning bolt. Maybe that’s an excuse. Maybe I’m full of excuses. I don’t deny it.

Today I worked on my book. Let me clarify, as “my book” is starting to be a complicated phrase. I worked on the book I wrote before I wrote The Black Hour, the book that got me an agent. This other Book-in-the-Drawer (literally, as I have it saved in a folder on my hard drive named “The Drawer”) still speaks to me, enough that I want to see if it has life left to it.

But it’s not a Fun New Project, is it? I’m waiting for the Fun New Project that zings.

Which is why I’m sort of…stuck.

But today I worked on that book anyway, just to see what happened. And…writing happened.

Any day that writing happens, I win.