JUST ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL

What's the beef? I've read some of the lists I'm on lately, and a common thread occurs with many writers: I have hit a wall. I can't find my story. I don't know what's wrong with me.

I think every writer hits one or even sometimes more of these walls during the course of time. Sometimes evenone or more versions of it on everybook (glances from side to side to be sure no one's looking in my direction). In Big Money, I realized actually at about the 3/4 point that my secondary characters were just hanging around whistling... I was totally stumped. It took a sit-down, long indepth converstation with my hubby(God Bless him he's good for something, lol) to clear that roadblock. It just popped up in a conversationand I was off and running with a new and exciting little twist.

That was actually an unusual one for me personally. Middle blues usually come for me in the form of the what if I've taken a path that the readerswill not like. It's the path 'I' see, but maybe they won't like it. In my third novel I killed the main male character -won't call him the 'hero' although in some ways he was, but it wasn't a romance per say, and he wasn't typically heroic - still readers fell in love with him (can't blame them, i sure did too). Most of the responses I got from readers were really up beat and positive, and in general loved the story... one reader- I swear I will remember this forever because it was so cute, funny, and serious at the same time, wrote to me when she got to that part - YOU KILLED HIM! I CAN'TBELIEVE YOU DID THAT! -- I'd never heard from her before, and I never heard from her again. LOL, but I often wonder what she thought of the actually positive ending for the main character, it was a story of growth, and 'coming of age' if you will for the MC, it wasn't 'his' story at all except that he was the impetus for her.

What I learned from that, is that you are absolutely never going to please everyone. Still,in spite of the lesson, it's a nagging worry nevertheless.

For Hell's Bells, in the middle conundrum now, it is not a where the hell is my plot. I know the plot, it's is this the way I should go with it? Did I make the right move? Will this say it best, or should I have done something different? By now, you'd think I'd trust my characters to lead me in the right direction as long as their road is clear (they know what they're supposed to be doing plot wise, which they do --they've all read the outline, good little demons and humans that they are). But no... sometimes characters get a little carried away with themselves, and you have to whip them back into line. *Feeling a little bit of a power trip going on here, and Alexander is looking over my shoulder shaking his head wondering ifhe wasn't better off with Satan after all.*

Sometimes, one of the best remedies for brickwallitisis a good long sit down with the characters themselves. Looking over shoulder and giving Alexander a glance that suggests we need to talk.--His return glance suggests something else, and I'm not sure if he's hungry (in which case, I think I'll hide for awhile), or has other desires, which could be more fun than talking, I'll admit that, but it doesn't do much for helping the brick wall problem. I did realize that one of my 'sagging middle' problems in this book is that I missed the addition of a subplot. I started it by adding a mention of a certain organization in the book, but never gave them anythingto do...bad me. Now if I could just get a few days off work so that I could sit down and really hash out their role in this, I'd be good to go.

What this all comes down to is that EVERY writer gets this. The common problem for newer writers is thinking that they have a 'problem' because it's happening. The problem is something that can be fixed, it's not YOU, it happens to everyone, just roll youreyes, roll up your sleeves, and have sex with,...oops, I mean talk to your characters.