by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Now that I’ve gotten the first act of my novel’s first draft where I want it, I now find myself in the first half of the second act. Now, I have to interject at this moment that I keep thinking I’ve stabilized the novel and I’m about to wrap up the first draft sooner rather than later — then I abruptly run into a structural problem and have to throw everything up in the air and get delayed greatly. But I feel pretty good about this particular version of the story.
Having said all that, I’m afraid I’m going to have to rework the entire thing in a rather dramatic fashion. The reason is, this is the part of the story you pick up the book for. This is called the “Fun and Games” part of the story. It’s supposed to be meaty and fun and interesting.
And, right now, not a lot is going on in this part of the novel.
So, I’m going to throw a lot of it out and the brood for a few days. I may go on a little writer’s retreat somewhere and just stare at the hotel ceiling room. Whenever I’m momentarily stuck with this novel, that does the trick.
The overall premise of the novel is very strong. It’s just I keep having to recalibrate aspects of the specifics of it as I go along. I have very high expectations for myself and, as such, sometimes I hit a brick wall of simply having no idea what to do.
But this is kind of the fun part of all of this. I like the ebb and flow of development. I will admit, however, that I really need to read a lot more. I’m so obsessed with the novel — which has completely consumed my life — that I’ve lost sight of the old adage: if you have time to write you have to time to read.
I just need to stimulate my creativity by looking at things in a different way. So, I’m going to give myself some slack until, say, the beginning of next month in a few days before I get too stressed out about where the novel is going at the moment.
