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Process
Oct
14
2006

So there’s this book. Sigh. Every time I picked it up I’d either be blocked or on my way to a block. I actually started over about 20K words in and wrote a totally different heroine. Which worked to a point, part of what I was hung up on was that who she was was a major plot point but there were too many other plot points and she had ISSUES.

So the new heroine worked better and I tweaked some stuff but I got stuck again.

I realized the other night though that the stumbling block wasn’t the heroine so much, or rather not just the heroine, but the main plot point, which wasn’t, I don’t know, punchy enough, meaty enough, something like that.

So as I was sitting in bed, staring at the sky as deepened into night, it came to me. I wasn’t thinking right about the plot point. I had something as “the big bad” that wasn’t really, which is why I was hung up. And quite honestly, my fix came from my new heroine and I’ve written six thousand words in two days on it. Oh and it sort of turned into a menage, well not sort of, it is. I didn’t actually plan that part, I kept resisting that but it kept coming up and I gave in and a way to make it work came to me and Woot!

Threat of Darkness is a book that’s been with me since I finished A Touch of Fae at the end of 2004 but I didn’t have the time or the ideas until this year and it’s been rattling around, bugging and frustrating me ever since. But Jayce wanted his book and Aine wanted to be in it and Mei isn’t who I thought she would be originally but she’s someone I really love for Jayce and Card and I’m really excited about this! BTW, Card is, oh, he’s so yummy that I had to keep him in as Mei’s other man.

Sometimes the ideas just come to me and the process is straightforward and I just move through it in chunk after chunk and I finish and love it. Other times it’s like this. It’s all work but sometimes it’s easier – but it’s all gratifying once the lightbulb goes on.

4 comments to “Process”

  1. May
    October 14th, 2006 at 9:18 am · Link

    Sometimes, you just have to go with the ‘flow’ of the book. Though sometimes the issue is that it’s not flowing. 👿



  2. maura
    October 14th, 2006 at 12:22 pm · Link

    Great news that you’ve written more on it!

    I had a similar type of happening in a story I was working on and making next to no headway because I was really trying to write to my original idea – but that’s not where the story was going.

    Once I gave in, things got much easier.



  3. Lauren
    October 14th, 2006 at 4:59 pm · Link

    May – no kiddin. This was one I put aside several times. I think because when I picked it up again, the problems still existed. Now that I’ve figured out what it was, that the problem wasn’t being blocked but rather having to fix a big problem, it’s moving along nicely. BTW, you won the Tri Mates sneak peek contest at my messageboard – congrats!



  4. Lauren
    October 14th, 2006 at 5:00 pm · Link

    Maura – I’ve gotten better over time, at being able to let go of my older ideas and just hack them away and move newer/improved ones in. But I’d just been approaching this book wrong. So thank goodness I finally figured it out.





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