The Grumblings of a Gut

It’s taken me a few years of writing professionally to pinpoint my biggest weakness: Minor Plot Lines.

Okay, I guess I could say ALL plot lines give me trouble, but in the actual writing of the story, I can keep the main arc flowing in my head rather easily. I can always answer the “what’s the story about” question. There may be gaps, but I can usually weave the mental pages together from beginning to end. Mind, it just takes five minutes.

When I sit down to write, the main arc takes my primary focus and it never fails that halfway through constructing the first draft I begin to grow nettled. I become disgruntled at the first signs of the troubling sensation, located deep in my gut. In the beginning, as with all unsettling stomach problems, I opt to ignore it. “It’ll all be fine,” I tell myself. “I’ll bring Joe in at some point.” (Joe is one of the characters in Quest for Milo.) And so I keep working. Plowing onward with my head down and eyes focused on the screen, refusing to acknowledge that my gut’s grumblings are growing louder.

Ignoring ones gut for too long, however, leads to bouts of sudden gloom, pensiveness, lack of sleep, and ultimately culminates in fits of tears, wailing that I am a terrible writer and I should just stop right now. It is only after all the sniffling and moping that the fever breaks just long enough for clarity of thought. And I ask myself: “What’s wrong with Milo?”

A list appears in my brain and the sight of it is terrible enough to send me back under, but I don’t. I answer myself.

“The plot lines.”

And a startling thing happens. As if it floats down from the ceiling, an idea drifts down and lands upon my knee. It isn’t the solution to every problem on my list, but it can fix a few and better yet, it brings back a character (who I was quite fond of) that I had to cut from the very early versions of the manuscript. So I open my laptop and inspect the story with new energy.

After an evening of tinkering, this is what I did:

Moved three chapters to an earlier location.


Brought back a minor character (Izzie Groot).


May be forced to completely rewrite two chapters due to these changes.


Will be able to bring in Joe’s plot line and another plot line more stoutly, all thanks to Izzie.

Phew! My gut is feeling much better now.