WRITING THE RELIC

Do you know how many versions of Chapter Fourteen I've written over the last seven days? A lot. Fortunately I'm happy to report that the daily grind has paid off with a finished chapter, and a sense of rejuvenation at that. I have to admit that my commitment to writing a little bit every day, while helpful to my ultimate goal of finishing my novel, started to feel a lot more like a chore over the past week. I had what felt like a great opening to the chapter, but when I followed it to it's conclusion, I realized that it just wouldn't work, and had to archive that version somewhere else and start over. Who knows, I might be able to work it in somewhere else. Speaking of following the story to its conclusion, I do want to give an update about the overall story block I mentioned in my last post, namely that I figured it out. Mostly. Really, in my brainstorming, I discovered a way to integrate some characters from earlier in the book into this later half in a meaningful...

Okay, I hit another wall today. Not a literal wall, I mean a wall of writer's block. Although, now that I think about it I did hit my head against the wall when I woke up this morning... That's probably the reason for my woes. So I've been reading a lot about writing novels and about so-called 'plotters' and 'pantsers.' For those of you who don't know, a plotter is someone who sits down and plots their book out from start to finish with an outline, and a pantser is someone who flies by the seat of their pants. Kind of dumb names, but whatever. As I've thought about these weird categories, I've determined that I'm far more pantser in my writing than plotter. Sure, I have had a basic idea of the elements I want in the story, but the story itself is kind of just loosely jangling around in my head. I have an idea of the end, but it's not really known how I'll get there just yet. The problem is that tonight I got a wild idea that I sho...