Week 20: Getting “Medicine Snake” Unstuck

 

Vision Board for “Medicine Snake”

Getting Unstuck: Medicine Snake

By Jeff Posey

Go to Week 1: Anasazi Novels: Writing Number 10, “Snake Medicine”: Week 1

Sometimes I’ll be writing along, fully imagining the story, and then my hands rise off the keyboard as if possessed by something other than me, and I realize I’m stuck.

Now I have to get unstuck.

I sit around and stare at my storyboard a lot. It hit me that, for a little more satisfaction, and symmetry, Molta, the bad guy, has to go from center canyon (Chaco Canyon, New Mexico) to the Twins (Chimney Rock National Monument in Colorado), and I couldn’t think of a good motivation for him to do so.

Story and plot is less about what than why, hence, I was stuck. My daily word count dropped, and my “daydreaming” hours went way up. Now I’ve decided to read from the beginning to the end, which often helps me see how to get out of box canyons. How to get unstuck. I hope.

I’m at 44,115, teetering over the brink of Act IIa into part b. Right where the hero, Ingta, becomes a warrior. I’m not going to tell you what tips him over. It’s too big a surprise.

But I do have to figure out a good motivation for Molta to get up to the Twins.

Time check

Let’s do another time analysis and see where I am. I prefer to hand-draw these things, so here is how my 172 total hours spent on Medicine Snake to date breaks out:

Week 20: Hours to Date on “Medicine Snake”

Writing is 70 hours for 44,000 words, which is 629 words per hour. That’s not as high as I’d like. This whole novel is taking me longer than the last several. I’m probably over-thinking it.

Daydream is also 70 hours. It takes me a long time to think up a good story.

Research is 21 hours and won’t go up much more, unless there’s something particular I need to dig into that I don’t foresee.

Marketing is 12 hours for writing this blog. I’m pretty fast with those. You can tell because it’s always first-take raw first draft.

Now I just have to get Molta to move his blind self up to the Twins for the next part of the story.