Filthy Starving Readers

So since I've been in rewrite land, working on tightening and reworking the first hundred pages of Intended to get the story moving quicker, this post definitely caught my eye. Not because I think my pitch needs a lot of work, but because of all the feedback I've received, the number one crit was that it begins kinda slow. And by kinda slow, I mean that while I'm not necessarily writing drivel, it could stand to be faster.

It wasn't that I wasn't getting to the catalyst by page 3o that was the problem. The catalyst was there on page one. But the problem was it wasn't catacalysmic ENUFF. I had gotten it stuck in my head that the catalyst needed to simmer and build and then bang. And as a result, it ended up banging somewhere around page 100 (or so I'm told... okayokay, I can see that now). How do I know it banged somewhere around 100? That's the page number that five different people who read the book in part or completion gave me that said it went from being "good" to "not-put-downable". That was the point at which they decided to go hungry (or forgot to take a shower and get dressed) to find out what happened to the characters.

So yeah. That's what your shooting for in the first 30ish pages. Filthy starving readers who want to know what happens next dammit! I had never thought of it that way.

So while rewriting today over my lunch break, I decided to peek (I've been trying not to peek because 100 pages is a quarter of the novel!). I was wondering how many pages I had shaved off. I still don't know actually, but I was in the middle of a scene that I would personally consider unputdownable and it was only page 46. I'm pretty sure it has some unputdownable moments before that, too. So that's a pretty nifty improvement in my book.

Segue Back to Writing

So I've taken a rather long break from serious writing (whatever that is). Did a play. Sang really loud. Made some new friends. Drank a bucket of Guinness (not all in one night, mind you). Learned about fingerprints (am still learning about them, will still be learning about them for several years, but I like them, so it's cool). Read a few good books. Let my membership in my local RWA chapter lapse... *big sigh*

Time off has definitely helped me recharge my creativity, but I'm pretty sure it blew my daily writing habit all to hell. Er... yeah. Daily Writing Habit - you know - that thing that you see in all the advice columns as being the secret to becoming a publishing success. Well, ever since going back to work, I've been thinking about this. How DO writers write when they are supporting themselves with another job. I read somewhere that the perfect day job for a writer is the job that doesn't get in the way of their writing production... HUH? ALL day jobs that I know of get in the way of your writing production. I think this bit of advice is assuming that one would QUIT the day job if the writing income were there in all its best-selling glory. Hmph. My only comment here would be that my day job is giving me about twice as many ideas for good stories as I had when I was home... More Ideas = WICKED GOOD for inspiration = WICKED GOOD for quality of production. But it also sucks my freetime dry as a popcorn fart - and this is becoming a complex equation, so pay attention, and try not to lose me here - Popcorn fart freetime = WICKED bad for production QUANTITY. So what are we after here, huh? Quality or Quantity? Or both? Let's try to equate those equations... shall we?

Full-time Work = More Ideas = Wicked Good Inspiration + Less Freetime(a pile of dirty frickin dishes to the power of the number of people in your household and mustn't forget about laundry) = Wicked Good Inspiration + Popcorn Fart Freetime = Not So Good Production Quantity, but What You Do Produce Actually Is Pretty Genious

Hm. Doesn't actually sound so bad when you get to the bottom line, does it?

But the point is, I'm struggling to even find time to create a new sentence, much less work a complex rewrite that's been requested. I realize I need to give myself time to develop a new writing routine. That I need to make a date with the keyboard and defend it. But there are things (eh hem, people I love, and pets, and those pesky thrice daily rituals we call meals, and omG, the dishes... *sobs uncontrollably*) that routinely get in the way. What's a gal to do?

Well, as you can probably imagine, finding an hour or two a day on weekends isn't as much a problem as stealing minutes of a weekday. This is a puzzle that I'm determined to solve, but so far, the solution is stumping me.

I hear a lot of folks get up early to write. Hm AGAIN. All I have to say is: they must be morning people. So let's get this straight before anyone suggests I actually try to mimic this pattern: I don't do mornings without at least a pot of high test coffee in my system. And I'm trying to cut back on my coffee intake.

On the other end of the spectrum, I guess the obvious answer would be to write after the kids go to bed. Well, frankly, this could work for me, now that the play is done. But night time is not the best time for me to be writing. Writing isn't conducive to sleep for me. It jazzes me up, gets me going. Gets my brain ticking. And the last thing I need to be thinking about at ten pm is how I didn't finish That Scene. I could be awake staring at the ceiling for hours with a daily writing routine like that. Sheesh.

The only thing that's working for me right now is writing during my breaks and lunch at work. I bring my laptop to the office, and fire it up first thing in the morning, that way I don't have to wait for it to load during precious break time. Then I can just slide over and start reading/writing when I have free time. I like it because that's the kind of writer I am - fits and starts.

Other tips I'm trying out:

1) Limiting time on email and the phone. These are serious time sucks (that - don't get me wrong - I love with the power of ten thousand suns).
2) Limiting time reading blogs/internet surfing. It helps that my laptop at work isn't hooked up to the internet. I'm still reading my favorite blogs, but instead of checking obsessively every day for updates, I now check a few times a week - reading several posts at once, catching up on all the goodies and news.
3) Jotting down ideas in a notebook. I used to do this back when the kids were babies, and I can't believe I forgot how helpful it is. There's nothing worse than getting a genius idea when you have no time to play it out on paper, and then forgetting about it by break time.

Creative Process - Blinders On

I'd like to confess to being a big old loser - I signed up for the 70 Days of Sweat Challenge (again) and missed the first check in day (again). But (again) it really doesn't matter in hindsight, because (once again - you guessed it!) I had no stinking pages to report.

Phew! I feel lighter already.

Now that it's Saturday, and my special CSI training class is almsot over at work and I can tell you that an accidental whorl is about The. Coolest. Thing. EVER. to look under a magnifying glass, I'm feeling like going back to the writing a little bit. And as mentioned above, that's convenient because I DID sign up to sweat.

Clearly, I need to work on rewrites for material that's been requested. That needs to be a #1 priority. I really don't even know how long the "good manners" window is open on a rewrite request, but I do know I want to get it done soon, while the story still feels fresh to both of us. But aside from that, I think I'm going to work on outlining Vespers to see if I've got a good enough goal, motivation and conflict to drive the story forward. Some writer friends thought the story kind of died on the vine during Nano, and while I knew that wasn't the case - this is a story that I'm dying to tell - I couldn't tell them why I'd stopped writing it. Now that I've had some time to think about it, I've realized a few things:

a) I was talking about it WAY too much with people, and that's dangerous for me in the early stages of a story. When a story isn't exactly formed in your head, it's not the best time to seek advice, unless you WANT someone else telling you how it goes - and some people DO like to write their first draft with a lot of input. Anyhow, I started listening to all this advice about it, and it quickly started to veer away from what I saw in my head when I envisioned the story - and that's where I lost the passion to tell it. It was like this - "OH really? You think it needs to be more romantic? You don't like my idea of what's driving Levi to depression? You think that makes him unsympathetic? I should make him more heroic? Okay. I guess I could do that. No wait. Never mind. I don't like this story anymore." I literally didn't want to write the story my friends and fellow writers wanted to read. I didn't want Levi to be heroic. I wanted him to be depressed and dying inside. Because I wanted Vespers to be a story of giving and healing, and I wanted it to be hard for him to get from point a to point b. I wanted there to be a romance subplot that feeds the healing, but in my mind, there may not be a Happily Ever After ending. I wanted there to be good ghosts and bad ghosts, and ghosts that could touch the human world, and ghosts that don't know they're dead, and ghosts that LOVE being dead so they can relive the happiest moments of their lives. And I wanted there to be a boy - a live human boy - who wants very much to die, and has a very good reason (in his mind) to take his own life. And frankly, I think I need to be aware going forward that it's going to make some people nervous.

b) THIS is my creative process! Every time I've written a book (4 times, I'm feeling qualified to say that) it started with just a few chapters. Followed by a break - sometimes long, sometimes not so long - during which that block of loosely connected ideas and characters gels into something worthy of being called a story. Followed by the writing.

That doesn't mean that I won't need reader feedback and critique at some point during my process. And it doesn't mean that I won't ever have to use my "phone a friend" option when I get stuck, but it does mean I need to stop brainstorming with others until I've got the story outlined and validated in my own mind. That way I know when to say, "no thanks - great idea, but it doesn't work for me."

So I'm going to get off the dang blogger now and go do some writing!!

Rewrite Hell and Other Funness

I would love to say that the rewrites are going splendiforous, but that would be a big fat lie. And being an overly honest (to the point of annoying all my friends)-type person, I just hate lying. So I'm here - on President's Day no less, a holiday which is very important to all state employees - to clear my conscience in hopes of jarring a few good sentences loose.

What can I say? I'm desperate...

The truth is, I'm having a hard time, and I'm only attacking request #1 of 3. Condensing the first 100 pages. I just junked version three of chapter one after Leah read it and said it sukked in very nice words. I had to agree, it was the only fair thing to do. Cyrus was hot, but that's not saying much - he's always hot. So in summary, it sukked, and I junked it. (I already said that, didn't I? I am rather fond of repeating myself, I'm told.)

I started in earnest on version 4, and may have something usable, but eventually my eyes started bleeding over some extensive re-ordering of scenes in preparation to make a massive fifty page cut because the scenes I WANTED to cut left a mess of pointless nonsense so deep you'd need a snowblower or a frontloader to clear it when done chronologically, so I had to stop...

Did that make ANY sense? Good. Because I'm confused now, too. And I had nightmares about it all night long. Vampire bat nightmares that I'm still scratching my head about this morning over a tall cup of coffee.

Coming to the conclusion that I needed to read blogs, I became cheered up after reading this post by Diana and following her linkage trail back to the source of much silliness. *Insert contented sigh here.* Zombies do make me happy.

Now that I'm feeling right and centered again, I'm going to re-read the crap I edited last night and see if it'll ever be worth shipping off to Leah again. She has strict orders to bitchslap me if I write anything else that sucks or is a bad idea again. (But do it gently, please, Leah, I'm fragile right now.) This book has been through too much to ever suck as bad as it almost did on version 3.

Synopsizing Sux

So. I just realized that while I've been working on reweaving my brilliant YA literary novel Something Beautiful... (wait for it...) that I never wrote a synopsis!!

Okay. Yes. I had an outline when I wrote the first draft. And the second draft, I wrote a synopsis for that. And it was hard and did suk royally during the process. (This story was very complex and needed to be perfectly weaved. No room for silly mistakes.) I'm pretty sure that's where I got the brain freeze on the project to begin with. I intimidated myself. I said if it wasn't perfect, I wasn't touching it. I realized then that as a work of women's fiction, it was going to be a hard sell, but that if I rewrote it as a YA, it had spectacular potential!

So today, that's my goal. To get that synopsis done. Which should help me actually finish the final draft, come to think of it.

You ever do this? Realize that the reason you're moving in slow motion on a project you love is because you failed to keep up with your hateful homework? I HATE synopses. HATE, HATE, HATE them. But they're a necessary evil of the writing and selling process, I guess.

SQUEE!! Just checked my email and my Amazon order has been shipped. Ghostly research references and Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer!!

Let's Talk About Sweat, Ba-by!

I can't believe I'm doing this.

But I need to get a move on. I'm not creating any new material since Hubby came home three months ago. Time has flown, and sure, it's not like we weren't busy buying a house and moving or anything, but he had to return to work weeks ago. And what have I been doing? Well, unpacking boxes for starters. And don't forget chasing my crazy kids. Editing? A little. Contest entries? Yup. A few requests for material? Hurray! Writing? Um. No. Not so much.

So when I saw the 70 Days of Sweat Writing Challenge on my morning-coffee-blog-surf the other day, I knew I should participate. But I didn't think I would. Because I'm a wimp, and I don't want to look bad if I go back on my commitment. And all that crap. I didn't actually decide to do it for real until last night. Basically, the idea of the challenge is to go public with a commitment to write an entire book in seventy days. Which means you gotta write every day. Which is hard, but rewarding. I know I can do it because I wrote Intended in a little over three months. But I didn't write every day.

The book I'm going to work on is Something Beautiful. I actually wrote a rough draft of this book a few years ago, and abandoned it, for it needed such reworking that I knew it would be like starting from scratch. The story became very complicated, and what I had originally meant to be a book for adults had obviously morphed into a no-man's land genre that was half YA, half adult. Not so good for marketing purposes. A very hard sell. But after some thought, I know this will make a fabulous YA if I can focus the theme, and retell the story as a younger woman would.

I'm sweating buckets up here in my haunted office today. (No ghost sightings for me, but I'm still thinking about what my friend said.) I gotta make up for Sunday-Wednesday, 5-6 pages a day, I think. All in all, about 25 pages, so not so bad, but a good days work. And it should get my mind off the submissions I have out there.

Keeping It Real

Two writing goals for today only.

#1. Query Intended

#2 Rework chapters four and five (which are kind of a mess for some reason, and probably need an amputation and end up being one chapter)

One personal/family goal.

#1 Gather next batch of papers needed for mortgage application at the bank. (I think we already signed over our first-born child's soul in blood what more could they possibly want?)

Sweating Buckets

It was an eleven page day yesterday. Not the twenty I'd hoped for, but eleven solid pages that took me farther in the plot than I thought I could go in eleven pages. So I'm still crossing my fingers. 13K left (about 52 pages for me).

I wrote out my pitch for NEC RWA this morning. It helped that I had a query letter already drafted. I just expanded the blurb to clarify some vague details and voila.

I only have a couple hours to write before my kids come home, so I'm going to jet.

Self-imposed Deadlines

I got through the weekend in one piece.

Wrestling Update: Woobie (my small fry, who has been waffling and weaving about finishing wrestling season) did go through with the second-to-last tournament. And BRAVO!! The little guy won his first match ever!! His hug bowled me over. And his smile from that sense of accomplishment and pride lasted all day long. I don't know if he'll want to wrestle next season or not, but when I suggested he might not like it, he looked surprised that I thought that. He said he does, it's just "very frustrating" and he doesn't "like losing." (I can't say I blame him.) Watching him for the rest of the day, I was amazed at how much more relaxed he seemed to be, knowing that he could do it.

Mungry (my seven year old) got his first silver medal. He's quite pleased with himself.

On Monday, Woobie turned six. I got no writing done whatsoever, as I had to spend the day wrapping gifties, mopping floors, and preparing the house for family and friends. Then yesterday was spent recovering from the weekend/birthday hangover.

In the midst of all this, my husband is due home sometime in the next two weeks (YAY!).

Now, the next thing on my psychotic schedule is the RWA conference this weekend. Back when I registered for the conference, I requested an agent appointment to pitch INTENDED, because I was sure I'd be done with it. It's still not done. Close, but no cigar. I can probably bang it out today and tomorrow if I have no interruptions. But what's the likelihood of that?

Even more frustrating is the fact that friends and family have actually suggested that it's not important for me to get the project done. I need to go easy on myself, they say, I'm going through a lot. And I say this is exactly the kind of attitude that frustrates my fellow writers most. Since my husband has been gone, I've been going through a lot. But generally, I don't find that gets me a break very often in the real world. In fact, I had to quit my paying job because my boss was so unsympathetic to the fact that my life had just changed 180 degrees. Additionally, I've had to delay my degree work in Administration of Justice because my professors were not very sympathetic to this fact either. My point is that life isn't going easy on me. And I can't afford to marshmallow and feel sorry for myself. If I want this (and I do!) I need to drive myself forward, harder right now than probably ever before. Because a goal that no one else supports (such as publishing a book) is the goal that is most likely to get swept under the rug in a time of great distraction!

*Sigh* In all fairness, most people just don't get the industry. All they know is there is a huge failure rate, and when they hear someone they love is writing a book - their instinct is to protect that person from what they predict will be a huge fall. Furthermore, they do not understand that writing is a job that you have to do way before you even get hired in most cases. I tried to explain it recently like this: This appointment at the conference is to me the equivalent of a job interview. If I were preparing for a job interview, would you not advise me to have all my homework done? Having a complete manuscript is tantamount to having your resume in order. Would I walk into a job interview with no qualifications or resume to offer my potential employer?

Some have suggested I just go to the conference "for fun." Um. No. I did that my first time. I needed to go the first time with no pressure. I needed to see what the conference atmosphere was like. I needed to see if this was something I could succeed at. But this conference costs my family hundreds of dollars. If I wanted to go somewhere for fun with this kind of money, it would involve a day's worth of fun for four at the zoo, or a relaxing spa day with my hubby. Plain and simple, I'm going to the conference to work. It will inevitably be fun, because I'm a dork, and I'll make it fun. But it's work.

And that's what I'm doing today. I'm writing. Self-imposed or not, a deadline is a deadline. And I'm up against a tough one!

Another chapter bites the dust!

I just wanted to post before the weekend, that I did finish chapter twenty today. *Clap, clap, clap* Zzzzzzz!

No, I'm not really tired yet. But I gotta get to bed soon. I'm going to try to make my word count goal for the day before I do though. Which was... 5K. I'm almost there. 4 more pages.

If I can write like this all of next week, I will finish this thing by Friday, no problem. (Don't I say that like i'm not sweating anymore?)

In other news, I just wanted to say that my kitties have been housequeer this winter. Today was the second fifty degree day we've had in a row up here in Maine. And we've melted about eight inches of snow. All that's left is the big snowplow banks along the sides of the parking lots. Let's just say mudseason has officially begun.

It was also windy. And my kitties couldn't get enough of being out there today.

Now, they got fat this winter.

Picture fat kitties running through mud chasing pieces of trash left by passing cars on our lawn.

Holy crap!! Where has the week gone?

I can't freaking believe it's already Friday. And I have to pitch this book next weekend.

I have to admit, I'm still having moments of sweaty-palmed panic when I'm certain I won't be done with it on time and I'll be sitting there across from an agent that I truly respect and want to work with - and if they ask me if it's done, I'm going to say what? That it's almost done? Yeah. That'll work. Like they're almost interested, but not quite, since it's almost done, and could the next person almost get in the chair already so they can almost request some material? Oh my gawd. Is there any more blunt way of asking for the clue gun to shoot yourself with? But yesterday, I wrote ten pages, ten good pages. Which isn't much compared to when I'm on a roll. But I did finally outline the last few chapters of the book. And now that I know the basic scenes that are going to happen and kind of in what order, the dialogue is starting to come to me in bits in pieces. The voices are talking, and I am agog and aghast at what those muthas are saying. Let me tell you. I sat there scribbling with my jaw unhinged last night. I had no idea my characters felt this way!

I love this part of being a writer... the part where you begin to kind of "realize" the story has taken on a life of it's own. It lives and breathes on the page. It usually goes off in dark directions you wouldn't dream of sending a trained soldier with night vision. Like this ending isn't at all the ending I was picturing when I began it (well, it kind of is - it's not exact though). It's not even the ending I imagined a few weeks back. It's so much more unsettling. It reaches deeper into that universal YA conflict of "who's really in control of your life?" (which truthfully, I was only mildly aware was the theme), and it throws my little heroine into a situation where she has to literally "grow up" and make a critical life or death choice (that really isn't a choice) that will (seem to) damn her soul no matter what she does. I'm getting shivers just thinking about it!!

I'm going to guzzle some coffee and see if I can get chapter twenty written today.

Taming Those Hot Ideas

It was a good writing day today. Fifteen pages. And I worked another important scene - the emotional aftermath of a vampire battle and the death of my heroine's mother. I'm at 74,500 words. About 3/4 of the way there. We're onto the rising action that leads to the black moment now. Body count should rise. Huzzah!

Plus, I got an idea for a new piece that I can not wait to sink my teeth into (nope, it isn't a vampire sequel, but it should be). Okay. My problem: here's where I often falter. This was a hot idea (meaning it would have just flown off my pen, not that it was kinky at all, it's actually YA lit), and since I've been writing seriously, my habit is usually to follow my heart each day and write whatever is hot and speaking to me at that moment. The problem with following my heart is that my heart often leads in six different directions at the same time (anyone else fickle like me?). I currently have six (wtf?!) projects on the back burner while I finish INTENDED! Isn't that sick? And the truth is that I'm in LOVE with at least three of those stories - meaning I'm chomping at the bit to finish them, or reweave them, or whatever it is that needs to be done to them. So understand how hard it was for me to just write the hook (which often comes to me in the form of a preface) and hit save and not start listening to the voices on that one right away!

The truth is that time away from this hot idea will give me time to cook a really hot plot around that hot premise. Does anyone out there manage to successfully finish stories when they work on multiples? Or do you have to stay committed to get through it. This one story at a time thing is hard on me, but I'm finding it's moving me toward my goal much faster.

Well, this evening, it's back to work - on the vampires - for just a couple hours. I'm going to try to hit the sack before midnight. My boyz are waking up early with the time change - isn't that bizarre?

Working Again This Morning

I finally finished that evil Chapter 17. I ended up hitting delete again, on two pages that were just not taking it to the next level. Then I wrote five more to wrap it up.

I was having problems with it on two levels.

1. I wasn't getting to the nitty gritty of the scene where my main character, a teenage vampire, conronts the head vampire who just killed her mother and now wants her dead. We're talking general teenage pissiness and mega-grief combined with "why the hell am I a vampire to begin with" stuff. This scene actually had a life of it's own the first ten times I wrote it. It went from a very intense confrontation to a Scooby-Doo-monologuing-info-dump, which made me want to ralph as a reader when I went back through. So basically, I had to sit back and write down my goals for the chapter. What had to happen/be said? What could happen/be said? What absolutely, under no circumstances should happen unless your name is Thelma and you have a hot friend named Fred who is dating your best friend who is so pretty you have completely given up and agreed to be the dork. So Scooby info dump had to go. Although writing that part was very informative for me, and I cut and pasted those sections into an outtakes document that I can refer to for the information. (I highly recommend an outtakes document for writers. You may never be able to paste the words into another part of your story, but I often refer back to these little treasures).

2. The other thing that was holding me back was sheer procrastination. Which I finally realized was the result of fear. Sure, it's been a busy month, and I need to forgive myself for not having time to write, but there is no excuse for reading blogs and compulsively checking my email when I haven't reached my writing goals for the day. So I had to identify what I was afraid of. A few things actually:

a) This not my first manuscript, but it's my first YA. Naturally, I want it to be salable when I'm done with it. But I fear I've taken some risks with my characters that might make it hard to sell, no matter how fresh the hook is. I've read enough YA to know it's 90% how you approach a given taboo that determines whether it works or not. But I want to make sure I'm doing it right.

b) I'm afraid of the rewrite. Premature fear? Yep. Rewrites suck. But truthfully, I don't see this rewrite being nearly as hard as my first few. I know alot more about writing now.

c) What else do I fear? Rejection of course. Form rejections get you over that pretty fast. I've submitted less than a dozen times and had two encouraging rejections. Maybe by the time I have enough rejections to decoupage my bathroom I'll be cool here. I should probably get on that.

Do you ever get so wound up in fear that you can't move forward?

Glad to have the chapter done. I have a great idea cooking to end the story with a bang - lots of teenage love angst, a few vampire brawls, and a decision that will probably make readers want to either lynch me or demand a sequel. Obviously, I'm hoping for a series.

Work In Progress

Had a minor catastrophe with the brand new car this morning. Guess I drove over a huge industrial-sized staple because my tired was just about flat when I came out of the gym. The guys couldn't patch it, so I had to buy a brand new freakin' tire for a car that has less than 4000 miles on it. That could have easily thrown my entire day, but I'm cool.

I'm working this afternoon and evening. Goal for the day: finish chapter 17. I'm almost there.

Manic Monday

I planned to go to the gym today.

I planned to smear myself in bronzer and lay in the cancer coffin.

I planned to take the recycling back.

And I planned to write two query letters.

Do you think I did one single thing on my to-do list? No. But that's a typical Monday for me. I have no personal structure. I'm a total wingnut when it comes to time management.

It wasn't a total wash though. I did manage to make progress on Intended.

First, I reread the last eight pages I wrote over the weekend. It was crap. I kind of knew I was forcing it when I was writing it. But amazingly, after giving it a read-through, I knew exactly how to fix it. It always shocks me how easy it is to fix a bad chapter after I take a day off from it. So there. I hit delete on eight pages today, but I replaced them with eight more that I'm really happy with.

The other piece of good news was that I heard from my hubby, and he's coming home soon! YAY! (Knock on wood.) It's been a very long and lonely year without him, worrying about him over there in Afghanistan, being a single mom. There have been positive things that have come of it, such as learning how to do a lot of things myself, and doing alot of writing and research. But there have been many hard things that I don't ever want to go through again - such as nearly cutting my finger off, and stabbing myself in the head with an overhanging branch while mowing the lawn, and watching my kids grieve a loss they don't understand. So talking to him today was worth more than checking anything off my to-do list. Besides, I can do those things tomorrow.

Dead Ends

It happens to all of us at one time or another. Some people call it writer's block; I call it hitting a dead end. It usually happens to me when I'm flying along at a break-neck pace (like I've been on my brand new story) and something or other makes me take a break (a rough week, in this case). At any rate, I lose track of where I was going with my story, and it feels like slamming into a brick wall or being hammered by an anvil from the sky.

I try not to stress about what causes it. It's pointless, and it's all related to the same phenomena that causes me to start outlining my stories to death. It's called: I don't KNOW what happens next. It's called: I'm not having any more quasi-schizophrenic moments out in traffic, and I'm not having any more prophetic dreams - and it's pissing me off.

The bottom line is, I can't take this story to the next level.

I've tried everything. I've tried brainstorming things that could happen next. I've tried diagramming the plot to see where I'm at - midway through some rising action - plot doctor to the rescue! Let's sneak in a plot twist here to avoid what is rapidly becoming a sagging middle.

Um. No, actually. That sucks for me. It doesn't help one iota. I have written myself into so many corners by doing that, that I know it can't be a good thing for me. (Although I know a few people who can pull it off with such grace I never would have guessed they wrote by the seat of their pants.)

What does work for me was what I did yesterday. I sat my butt in the chair and made myself continue where I left off. I wrote until my husband called from Afghanistan late in the evening. And when we hung up, I reread the five pages I'd written (how's that for suckage? all day and only five pages?). At any rate, they weren't bad. It wasn't really sucky writing. It was the same quality as the writing I always put out. But it was NOT where I wanted the story to go. Oh no. I was horrified by the turns my characters were taking - getting all tender and romantic when nothing short of angst would get them to the next turning point. And frankly, these characters can't afford to be like that with each other - it will ruin the story completely.

I sat there staring at the pages, reading them over and over again. I could find nothing wrong with the way the characters behaved. They were consistent to the point of irritation, and while I agree that you have to let your characters be themselves, you also have to tell the story you set out to tell. The setting was dull, no doubt about that - note to self: must get them out of living room, need more action at this point in novel, action will take it to next level. The scene developed character, revealed a much-needed secret, and brought my heroine to the point of no return. It should have rocked! But damn it! It lacked zip! Where was the tangy zip?! Well, I'll tell you where it wasn't: in the living room.

So here's what I did. Here's my secret to getting unstuck in the new year. It's rash. It's completely hateful, but I did it anyway.

I hit delete.

Yup. I highlighted an entire days worth of work and hit the old delete button. And strangely, I feel much better. I don't feel like I wasted a day at all. I slept like a baby last night and woke up refreshed for the first time in months. It felt a little like I had spent a day being irresponsible with my kids, playing video games. I explored a mysterious cavern for treasure. Gathered up the baubles that presented themselves, and discovered that there wasn't much down there in the way of points and it was a dead end. So I returned back the way I came to I'll try a different avenue today.

Spending a day writing something you will delete is like playing games just for sh*ts and giggles. You don't actually win the game, but you learn something about it. You learn which moves are wasted, and the quickest route to the dragon you need to fight. You also learn which caverns are empty and which ones contain treasure or game tips worth the journey.

So next time you have writer's block, or get stuck, remember that. Keep writing. And don't be afraid to hit delete, even if (or especially if, haha) you think the writing is brilliant. You will be brilliant again. I promise.