Judy's Stew

Judy's Stew - What to Write Next

Well, I've really gone amok (I just learned that amuck is a perversion of amok) on this blogging business. First I thought I posted my b'day list to the family blog, but it came out on mine. Then two days ago I posted a new entry--a long one--and it never showed up. And I've learned that you can't cut and paste, which is a real downer.
So now I'm going to try again, with the post I tried to put up two days ago. Bear with me, folks, if anybody's out there reading.
When I first started writing, some thirty-five years ago, I would sit at my desk and think, "I'd write, if only I knew what to write about." Now, some sixty books, countless columns, articles, and reviews later, along with a few nice awards, it's all come back full circle. What will I write about next?
I'm working on a young-adult history, something I've done a lot of, and I'm about halfway through. It's not exactly commissioned, but it has a fairly sure publisher. But already my mind is thinking ahead--what's next? I am not good at being without a project, so I dread the day the history is finished and I sit blankly at my computer. I find myself delaying working on the history--reading mysteires and recipes, piddling, emaling longlost friends, anything to delay finishing the project. In truth, I am a long way from finishing. And then my conscience bugs me to get to work on it. Talk about the horns of a dilemma. (I sometimes also put down a book I'm really enjoying just because I don't want to finish it.)
I'd like to write an adult novel--I've done six, published in New York, and seven or eight young-adult novels, most published regionally. But I want to know that I have at least one more novel in me. My novels did well--not spectacularly, but okay with good reviews and good reader comment--in the 1990s. My fiction, including a recently published short-story collection from a small literary press (Sue Ellen learns to Dance and Other Stories) has all been about the experiences of women in the American West, past and present. My best novels were fictional accounts of the lives and marriages of Elizabeth Custer, Jessie Benton Fremont, and a Wild West show trick roper based on the life of Lucille Mulhall.
But now publishing has passed me by. My novel about Etta Place and the Sundance Kid was published in a small paperback run (my son-in-law who reads voraciously seems to think it's my best--or at least has the funniest lines in it). The novel abut the head of the ladies branch of the Columbian Exposition elicited comments from agents such as, "You write so beautifully, I wish I could sell your work." Talk about frustration. (The Columbian Exposition fascinates me still, and I may eventually do something more about it.)
So I'm chewing on what to do and reading books that I think will inspire me. Wishful thinking. I'm sure there are many writers in my situation.
What I'd really like to write is a mystery--but that's another story.