If you’re new to my site, you may not know that in addition to working full-time as an editor, I’m also a fiction writer. In 2014, I self-published my fourth novel, The Dragon’s Daughter, about the teenage daughter of a KKK grand dragon.
And since then, I’ve been rather stuck–in a variety of ways.
Last year I finished a novel, a ghost story set in Tennessee. I really like the concept of it, and I like my characters. The storytelling, though, well … that needs some work. Looking at it as an editor, I can tell that it has perspective (POV) issues. I need to sort out who my real protagonist is (which is extra hard in this story because the protagonist may actually be the character that I thought was the antagonist). I need to figure out who is going to tell the story best. Whose thoughts do I want my readers to be able to fully access–if anyone?
I need to rewrite the book. It’s definitely in first-draft stage. And I’m stuck. So I’ve left it alone for almost a year, which is quite depressing as a writer and quite frustrating as an editor. The editor side of me is hogtied by the writer side of me who is just sitting on her hands.
To try to alleviate this version of writer’s block that I seem to be suffering with, I decided to work on a different, altogether new book. At this point, I’ve outlined two and have written about 12,000 words of a third. And I’m stuck.
After talking this out pretty thoroughly with my husband and my daughter, here’s what I’ve concluded (and I’m sharing it because I’m hoping it might help other writers out there feeling rather stuck as well): Continue reading
