Writing Slivers

It took me about eight months to complete my first novel.  I wrote 30K over a six-month period, 30K during NaNoWriMo and spent a month revising.

Yes, NaNoWriMo was a huge push for me to finish that story, but I got to a point  where I couldn’t stop writing.  I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t shower without plotting, planning, and carrying on one-sided conversations with my characters. Even after my husband would drag me to bed, I’d lay awake for hours staring at the ceiling and pouring over the things I’d write as soon as I got to my computer again.

That crazy adrenaline only lasted for that story.  I’ve never felt that insane motivation (okay…obesession) to get my WIP complete. 

Until I started this new ms. 

It’s like a sliver under my skin. I can see it, I can feel it, but I can’t get it out because of the sheer amount of reasearch this story requires.  It’s so freaking big that I need something more than tweezers and hydrogen peroxide (or my laptop and Mt. Dew, if we’re going to continue the mataphor). So it’s festering, getting nastier and gooier with every passing second.

I could poke at it — play with the setting, dialogue, opening scene — but if I’m going to do it right, I need the tools.  And I just don’t have them yet. 

What do you do when you want to work on a story, but can’t for whatever reason?





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