Most of the time, I love what I do so much when people say writing is my job, I laugh right out loud. It’s not a job, it’s a passion, a part of who I am, a thing where I find joy and pride and understanding, and my escape when my real world is off-kilter.
Every great once in a while, I have a week where it feels like work. Which serves as a mental red flag to me that something isn’t right.
I had such a week recently. I opened my laptop looking for an escape in Faith McClellan’s new adventure, and no matter how long I stared at the screen, getting words on it was the slowest slog in human history.
I got up. Did a spin class. Took a shower, loaded the dishwasher, vacuumed the living room…all the things that usually shake something loose in my head when a story bogs down.
Still nothing.
One, two, three whole days of nothing, to be exact. I’m not sure that’s ever happened to me before. Or maybe it has, and it was just so stressful I chose to forget—but I was plenty stressed, y’all.
On the third day, I was helping my daughter with a big school project, encouraging her to think of a piece of her plans a different way—and bam. I knew what was wrong.
I needed to look at it differently, because I’d started in the wrong place. I was trying to write the middle of the book first.
The next morning, I opened my file and moved everything around so I could start at the beginning, and I wrote 10,000 words in four days. The story is rolling, I’ve figured out my villain and motive already (which doesn’t usually happen this early and I’m hoping will make revising easier), and my stress level is considerably lowered. Best of all, my work is back to feeling less like work, and I am having loads of fun chasing a very clever criminal across Texas with Faith!
With much affection,
LynDee
