Writing trials

I got stuck.

This happens a lot more than most writers will admit. Usually, we don't get mired hip deep in impassible muck into which we've written ourselves, but it happens on occasion. It happened to me writing Book 18 of Forgotten Worlds. After thinking about what was happening, I realized that I had a plot hole I could spin a planet through, to my chagrin.

It's not as bad as Ghosts was, where I had to stop writing it and switch to editing another book to get my mind off it, then go back with a fresh perspective that showed me what I needed. This only required a couple attempts at rewriting from a certain point in the story.

I tried a couple of ideas but neither quite fit and I was getting despondent in thinking this story would never work the way I expected, but there was a lot of good stuff already.

Then the answer hit. It wasn't as bad as a complete rewrite would be. I needed a combination of the rewrites and original to make the closed plot hole work. I'm now working through the scenes to rewrite the new plot direction into it. Fortunately, a lot of it can stay, although reordered.

Better now than later. I had 30K words on the book, but now that's not the case. At least it's not 0.

Now, I'm moving on in the writing again, and part of what I didn't want to lose was some surprising new characters. They get to stay. 😁

Be sure to catch up on the first 15 books of Starfire Angels: Forgotten Worlds. It's likely Book 16, GHOSTS, will be released in February 2024.