The joys of writing a sequel

I've been writing book 2 for awhile now — in fact I had hoped that I'd have it finished by now. But it's not. In fact I'm probably only a quarter of the way in. But that's not because I've not been working. I've been pounding the keyboard every day and getting a good word count done. So why have I been taking one steps forward and two steps back?

The honest answer is I really don't know. I've written about 60,000 words that I've scrapped. I had a strong outline that I immediately deviated from. I started boring and then made it exciting. I'm full of self-doubt and I'm questioning everything I'm doing. It's probably all of the above.

Writing books is hard. Turns out writing a sequel to a book you sold to your dream publisher is even harder because I want it to be great. I want everyone to feel they made a great decision signing me and I want this to be even better than the book they all love...

I've just got to find the right route up the word mountain one step at a time.