My Un-Sticking Technique

Hey guys, it's February and I'm still writing my manuscript.

Yeah...the one I meant to finish in January. There are a few reasons this didn't happen.

1. New semester starting with new classes to teach equals a lot of work.
2.  I may or may not have watched every episode of every season of Buffy. OK I may...
3. OH! And I had that really bad cold for awhile!!! Hence Buffy watching.
4. Truthfully...I was kind of stuck.

It took me awhile to diagnose the symptoms of my sitting down and not getting very far, or getting distracted too easily.

I was stuck. I wasn't really sure what to write next. The funny thing about this book is I have a clear sense of what needs to happen and all the loose ends I want to tie up, along with my plot twist and big reveals and ending.

But all of that is in my head, sort of blurred behind a cloud. It' like remembering an awesome movie you saw a few years ago and you know what happens, but explaining the plot to someone is another story.

Like Pirates of the Caribbean. Seriously! Explain the plot to me. I dare you.

Anyway, that was me. It's not writer's block. It's more a symptom of...I might have made wrong turn earlier in the manuscript.

I write VERY linearly. Like it's OCD practically. And if I sense something is amiss, I have a lot of trouble moving forward.

So in an effort to un-stick myself and continue actual progress, I printed out my manuscript and had it bound so I could sit down and read through, making notes for edits and adding in details I didn't realize I'd needed until I wrote later chapters.

And then, right in chapter 3, I found the thing I forgot about that will make the current scene I'm on in chapter 23 make sense!

I don't know why, but every time I run into trouble when writing, I go back to the beginning and it works out.

So that's what I'm doing. And if the past is any indicator, when I get back to the moment I was stuck, everything will become clear and that little cloud in my brain will go away.

In the meantime...lattes!