Taking a Break

It was about a year and a half ago that I decided to really take my writing seriously. I hadn't written much in a couple of years and I was surprised by how terrible and out of practice I was. I'd sit for ten minutes trying to think of a word. That's because writing is like playing the guitar; you'll never be able to play an F chord if you don't practice.

So I've been writing pretty much every day for the last year and a half. Every time I finish something, I immediately move onto something else because I'm afraid that if I stop, if I take a break, I'll lose what I've gained. I'm also an inherently lazy person, so I'm afraid if I don't stick to my routine, I'll have trouble getting back into it.

The problem is that i dove into this present work without much planning. I'm not really a planner. I know where the story begins and where it ends and I like to just wing it from there. Usually that works out well for me. It allows me to take side trips I wouldn't have take had I mapped out every aspect. But it doesn't always work. I'm at about 60k words for my current project. I know what the ending looks like and I've been working toward that. However the last couple of weeks have seen me struggling more and more every day, until yesterday and today I found myself just sitting there, staring at the screen wondering how I'd ended up where I was. I realized if I stayed the course, I'd end up with a story I didn't want, and if I wanted to get to the ending I'd originally intended, I'd have to go back, almost all the way to the beginning and start again. The problem is that I'm not sure yet, where I went so wrong.

And worst of all is that I'm not entirely certain the story is worth saving.

My agent's been trying to get me to slow down since he signed me. And while I heard him, I didn't really listen. So I'm taking a break. At least until my revision deadline for Deathday Letter. I'll keep up my routine by doing some short stories or something, but mostly I think I just need to find the right idea and go from there.

Sometimes I wish that I was the kind of writer who only had one idea. But I'm flooded with them. I'm practically Noah.

Maybe I'll write a story about a clown hunter.