August 20

I am having a real struggle this week.  Usually I can easily manage my goal of a thousand words per day but here it is Wednesday and I'm barely at 1500 for the week.

When this happens, it's usually because I've hit a plot area which I haven't mapped out well enough.  I know where I want to go and I even know roughly what should be in this area but for some reason, the pieces aren't coming together.

My usual techniques aren't working to loosen the blockage. 

I've tried writing alternate, stand-alone versions of the scenes I need to see if I can come up with good linking material.  No dice, the scenes are stuttering like a flooded engine.

I've tried writing ahead to material I feel more solidly about.  This will usually give me a better idea of what I'm missing, letting me get a better grasp on it.  No luck.  Instead, I feel almost as if I'm writing an entirely different novel.

I'm starting to think I have a flaw in either my characters or the initial third of my plot.  Maybe I've made the conflict between their goals too strong, reducing any realistic chance of them working together.  Or maybe I'm suffering from TMP (too much prologue).  I do have a big reveal coming up in the next chapter.  Maybe I should just forget about trying to put something in the middle.

I'll have to spend some time thinking about it.  Give my brain a chance to rest from churning against the current.  I hate to lose more time this week but better 500 of the right words than 5000 wrong ones.

It helps to write out the problem.  I've always used words to help define the world around me.  And once I have a problem defined, I can tackle it head on rather than grappling with phantasms. 

Meanwhile, to keep myself disciplined, I'll use the time to keep working on the business side of my writing.  Nathalia Suellen let me know that she won't be able to do my cover, so I need to look at some alternatives.  And I need to make sure my tax paperwork is all set with the IRS so that I don't get dinged twice for withheld income tax.  There's plenty to keep me busy.