At the starting gates.

Sometimes, hypothetically, it takes just a minute to figure out a plot issue, and sometimes, well...it takes two completely different drafts and many many days of banging one's head against the keyboard. Then, this feeling of dread hits one smack in the eyes, that one cannot move forward at. all. , followed by the realization that letting go of a main *thing* might be the solution.  

It would be difficult to let go of this *thing*. It is huge--monumental. It's something one is attached to by the proverbial super-glue. But one knows in their gut it has to happen.

Finally, when one does this letting go...something crazy happens.

The story magically unfolds.

Hypothetically, of course. *winks*

 

That, above, is a blank Scrivener screen, to a whole new document. My notes are below it, after twenty-four hours of frenzy-writing. Not done yet with this kind of plotting, or more like a ohallthiscrapisspillingfrommybrain. But I'm maybe a day away from drafting my heart once again. 

It's such joy and agony all at once, knowing another version of this story (third draft...not revision, but draft) will drain from me. And where will it go? Who knows but on the screen, on this file in my computer, and maybe for someone-who-isn't-me will love. But all of it is a learning process of letting go, of leaving it all in hopes it will come back to me a better story. Writing in itself is a romantic relationship, and my readers would be my happily ever after.

So that's where I've been. Hiding inside myself, looking for this story that was I was too stubborn to see.

But I'm toeing the line now.