I’m about 2 months behind on my self-imposed deadline for Black Desert.
I was supposed to have a draft by next month, but it looks like it’ll be May instead, with heavy revisions and something of a caliber that could be submitted to my editor by September or so (yes, I’m a heavy rewriter. Not just as I go – which is also heavy rewriting – but heavy rewriting after I have the draft. Until I know the final shape of the book, I can’t edit it properly. It’s complicated. I’ll rant about it another time).
In any case, I usually have some trouble in the Dreaded Middle of a book, and tax season and heartbreak didn’t exactly help the already muddy middle.
This weekend, I realized my sticking point in the narrative was that point in the book when Nyx knocks on Rhys’s door for the first time in six years. And then… I stopped.
I wrote some scenes ahead of that, the scene where she meets Khos and Inaya, some later scenes of violence and destruction and trippy shapeshifting, but it was this point in the story, when she’s gotta knock on the door of the guy who turned his back on her to make his own life that stuck me.
I’ve continued writing around the scene. I just keep staring at it. Tomorrow I’ll be writing the thing out in a plain old notebook. Sometimes when I get stuck, taking it to another writing medium helps.
There’s more I want to say about this particular sticking point, but I think I’ll leave it at that for now.
Tomorrow I get through it, cause I’ve got two full-time jobs here now, and deadlines, yo.
