We have arrived at the final week of November. Storms here in the Pacific Northwest have created havoc for some, and despite that, the season of parties has begun. My neighborhood escaped the storm damage, but many others are still without power. Also, Thanksgiving is upon us and cooking abounds. I carve out my writing time in the early morning and sometimes in the evening. Sometimes, the writing flows well, and other times it’s like trying to give the dog a pill.
For the last few weeks, many writers have been pouring the words onto paper, trying to get 50,000 words in 30 days. Some have written themselves into a corner and have discovered there is no graceful way out.
This happened to me in 2019 and again in 2023. In 2019, I took one of my works in progress back from 90,000 words to 12,000. I did pretty much the same thing in 2023.
Everything I cut was saved into a separate file, as those scenes weren’t terrible and could be the seeds of a new novel. They just didn’t work in the story I was attempting to write at that time.
I hate it when I find myself at the point where I am fighting the story, forcing it onto paper. It feels like admitting defeat to confess that my story has taken a wrong turn so early on, and I hate that feeling. Fortunately, I knew by the 40,000-word point that last year’s story arc had gone so far off the rails that there was no rescuing it.
I’m crazy, but I’m no quitter. So, in 2019 I wasted several weeks writing more words and refusing to admit the story was no longer enjoyable. On the good side, I had accomplished many important things with the 3 months of work I had cut from that novel.
- The world was solidly built, so the first part of the rewrite went quickly.
- The characters were firmly in my head, so their interactions made sense in the new context.
- Some sections that had been cut were recycled back into the new version.
The sections I cut weren’t a waste, they were a detour. In so many ways, that sort of thing is why it takes me so long to write a book—each story contains the seeds of more stories.
If this happens to you, I suggest taking a month or so away from this project. When I return to a manuscript that was set aside, I will spend several days visualizing the goal, the final scene, mind-wandering on paper until I have a concrete objective for my characters. Then I will write a synopsis of what needs to happen, and each paragraph of that synopsis will contain the seeds of a chapter.
Beginning a novel with half an outline and only a vague idea of the ending is why I sometimes lose my way in a first draft.
Sometimes, something different happens. In 2019, I realized the novel I was writing is actually two books worth of story. The first half is the protagonist’s personal quest and is finished. The second half resolves the unfinished thread of what happened to the antagonist and is what I am currently working on. Both halves of the story have finite endings, so for the paperback version, I will break it into two novels. That will keep my costs down.
2019 and 2023 were not the only times when my plots went off the rails. While I no longer have anything to do with NaNoWriMo.org, I do participate in writing quests each November. In 2020, I was 4 days into NaNoWriMo when things got bad, and I switched to writing a completely different novel.
If you are a regular visitor here, you know what happened. In trying to resolve a twist of logic, I accidentally wrote an entirely different novel with a completely different cast of characters and plot. That manuscript is in the final stages of prepublication.
For those of you who are curious—I have the attention span of a sack full of squirrels. Proof of that can be found in the 4 novels currently in progress that are set in that world, each at different eras of the 3000-year timeline, each in various stages of completion.
And all of this happened because I had to write history in order to avoid contradicting myself in the modern story. In the process of writing that history, historical characters and their stories grabbed my attention.
All writing is good writing. The work I cut out of my failed manuscripts has generated several short stories and novellas, so nothing is wasted.
There are going to be times when writing is work. Sometimes, we must accept that we are forcing something and it’s not succeeding. That is when I take the storyline back to where it got out of hand.
The sections you cut might be the seeds of something wonderful, a short story or a novella that you can submit elsewhere for publication.
I
think of Patrick Rothfuss and his struggle to write the books in his series, the Kingkiller Chronicle. The first two books, The Name of the Wind (2007) and The Wise Man’s Fear (2011), have sold over 10 million copies. Yet he is still struggling to turn out the third book in the trilogy.
Rothfuss’s work is original and powerful, but though it is highly regarded, he fights to put it on paper just as the rest of us do. His battle with mental health issues affects his ability to write the book he believes in. The fact that an author of his caliber also struggles to get the story down gives me permission to keep at it.
I believe in the joy of writing, in the joy of creating something powerful. If you lose your fire for a story because another has captured your imagination, set the first one aside and go for it.
We who are indies have the freedom to write what we have a passion for and take as long as we need to do it.
True inspiration is not an everlasting firehose of ideas. Sometimes, we experience dry spells. When I come back to the original work, I’ll see it with fresh eyes, and the passion will be reignited.
In 1953’s 
Neil Gaiman’s 
Dedicated authors are driven to learn the craft of writing, and it is a quest that can take a lifetime. It is a journey that involves more than just reading “How to Write This or That Aspect of a Novel” manuals. Those are important and my library is full of them. But how-to manuals only offer up a part of the picture. The rest of the education is within each of us, an amalgamation of our life experiences and what we have learned along the way.
Authors write because we have a story to tell, one that might also embrace morality and the meaning of life. To that end, every word we put to the final product must count if our ideas are to be conveyed.
I’m like everyone else. I can’t write creatively when life is too stressful. But I can always write a blog post, which is how I keep my writing muscles in “fighting form.”
The second piece of wisdom is a little more challenging but is a continuation of the first point: Write something new every day, even if it is only one line. Your aptitude for writing grows in strength and skill when you exercise it daily. This is where blogging comes in for me—it’s my daily exercise. If you only have ten minutes free, use them to write whatever enters your head, stream-of-consciousness.
The story is the goal; everything else is a bonus.
The well of inspiration runs dry and they quit. Many will never attempt to write again, although they will always consider themselves secretly a writer.
The first one is one I developed when working in corporate America. Frequently, my best ideas came to me while I was at my job. If your employment isn’t a work-from-home job, using the note-taking app on your cellphone to take notes during business hours will be frowned upon. To work around that, keep a pocket-sized notebook and pen to write those ideas down as they come to you.
Every obstacle we throw in the path to happiness for the protagonists and their opposition shapes the narrative’s direction and alters the characters’ personal growth arcs. As you clarify why the protagonist must struggle to achieve their goal, the words will come.
Finally, let’s talk about murder as a way to kickstart your inspiration. Some people recommend it but I suggest you don’t resort to suddenly killing off characters just to get your mind working. You may need that character later, so plan your deaths accordingly.
The writer of true science fiction must know the difference, especially when creating possible weapons. Superweapons and superpowers are science-based. Think 
Magic works best when the local population in that world accepts that it exists and has limitations. When you think about it, magic should only be possible if certain conditions have been met. It should follow a set of rules.
Conflict forces the characters out of their comfortable environment. The roadblocks you put up force the protagonist to be creative. Through that creativity, your characters become stronger than they believe they are.
However, neither science nor magic can support a poorly conceived novel. Science, the supernatural, and magic are just tropes, tools we use to help tell the story. Strong, charismatic characters, mighty struggles, and severe consequences for failure make a brilliant novel.
On October 28, 2010, I was scrambling, trying to find something I could write, but my thoughts kept returning to the old man’s story. The innkeeper had referred to him as the Great Knight, stupidly brave but harmlessly insane. Had he always been that way? Who had he been when he was young and strong? Who did he love? How did Julian end up alone if the three of them, Julian, Beau, and Mags, were madly in love with each other?
I suggest writing a short synopsis of the story as you see it now. This will be as useful as an outline but isn’t as detailed. It will allow you to riff on each idea as it comes to you and is a great way to develop the storyline.
Fortunately for me, my writers’ group is made up of industry professionals, and one in particular, 
The protagonist will find this information out as the story progresses and only when they need to know it. With that knowledge, they will realize they’re doomed no matter what, but they’re filled with the determination that if they go down, they will take the enemy down, too.
The answer to question number one kickstarts the plot: who are the players? Once I know the answer to this question, I can write, and write, and write … although most of what I write at that point will be background info. The answers to the other questions will emerge as I write the background blather.
They share some of their story the way strangers on a long bus ride might. I see the surface image they present to the world, but they keep most of their secrets close and don’t reveal all the dirt. These mysteries will be pried from them over the course of writing the narrative’s first draft.
And what if you are writing poems or short stories? Graphic novels? We will also go into preparing to “speed-date your muse” when embarking on those aspects of writing.
Setting: Does the setting feel real?
Be prepared for it to come back with some detailed critical observations, which may seem harsh. Any criticism of our life’s work feels unfair to an author who is new at this. And to be truthful, some authors never learn how to put aside their egos.
Worse, perhaps they were familiar with a featured component of the story, such as medicine or police procedures. The reader might have suggested we need to do more research and then rewrite what we thought was the perfect novel.
I went out and bought books on the craft of writing, and I am still buying books on the craft today. I will never stop learning and improving.
Learning the craft of writing is like learning any other trade, from cooking to carpentry. It takes work and effort to become a master.
Who is the antagonist?
Consider cogs: they are engineered to interlock with each other, and when they move close enough that one cog interlocks and turns another, they move other parts of the mechanism.
Confrontations are chaotic. It’s our job to control that chaos and create a narrative with an ending that is as intense as our imaginations and logic can make it.
This happens because my characters have agency and sometimes run amok. Thus, in the second draft, I examine the freedom I give my characters to introduce their own actions and reactions within the story.
Fortunately, they are rescued by Gandalf. While he is hiding, Bilbo discovers several historically important weapons. One of them is Sting, a blade that fits Bilbo perfectly as a sword. This is a positive consequence, as the blade is crucial to Bilbo’s story and later to Frodo’s story.
Life in the Realm of Fantasy 