Pick the project you’re excited about, especially if it’s your first book.

The reader does not have that background. They need a careful mix of hand-holding, prodding, education, mystery, and maddening deception. You must make the reader the detective who turns every page thinking, I must find out what happened, giving them just enough information to sustain that desire without satisfying them prematurely. So to speak.

Mystery is also important for the author as you write. When you know what the story is and you write with a fixed intention, the plot starts to feel contrived. Maybe you discovered something new about two characters, but you already outlined that scene so it’s gotta end like you planned. Allowing yourself to instinctively find new moments,

Give the reader a burning question—What happened here? or What’s going to happen now?—and let them investigate with the narrator and add up clues to get to the answer. Ideally your reader solves the mystery at the same time as the protagonist.

I thought, upon retiring from my non-writing job (circus aerialist and fire-eater), that my days would be wide-open vistas. Start the morning with some freewriting, spend an hour or two on a project, break for lunch, edit for a client, wrap up and have a “normal” evening like people whose work is done at five. I thought this would make me