I’ve always struggled with middles. It’s why a lot of my stories stop at the 25-35k mark. Maybe it’s my pantserly ways, since I usually have no plan to get from where I’m at in the middle to the end that I have in my head. Even when I finish a book, I usually rewrite the last half in revisions because it falls flat.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how to fix that, but maybe that’s just my process.
In the 7,019 words I wrote yesterday, this is what I started thinking about. I’m the thick of the book. I’m in that state where even when I’m not writing, I think about that book, about where the characters are going and where they will be, and what’s going to happen to them. I go through a dozen different scenarios.
When I was a kid, I used to act out these stories, and I think even though now I don’t put the sheet cape on, or use the sword from my Halloween costume, part of me still does act it out in my head. Part of me feels the realness of these characters that I create, and every one of them is part of my soul. Maybe that sounds a little weird. It made sense in my head.
I’m at the point of the book where things slow down. The characters are adjusting to the action of the beginning, and they’re not ready for the action of the end. They’re in limbo, and I’m sitting here trying to figure out just how I’m going to get them ready to deal with what’s coming for them. I think in a way, maybe I’m not ready for them to deal with their end. Maybe I’m tempted to leave them like this, because I know things are going to get bad for them if I keep going, and somewhere inside, I don’t want them to.
This is a large part of why I write romance. Because I need to know as much as the characters need to experience it, that things are going to be okay for them. They’re going to get their happily ever after.
Right now though, these characters I’m writing are in trouble, and while I’ve seen authors write about the glee they have putting their characters in that position and torturing them, I kind of feel like I’m torturing myself along with them. Maybe this is why I have such trouble with the middle, because that’s when everything goes wrong.
Despite all this, I managed 7,019 words yesterday. Not quite where I wanted to be at this point in the week, but I’m making forward progress, and that’s good for everyone. But especially me.
TOTAL WORDCOUNT: 28,749 words
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