This is how it goes: you are motoring along on your story, and the words are just flying out your fingers, into the keyboard and then up onto the screen. The writing is going great and you are feeling oh-so-smug. This is so easy, you think, why don't I do this all the time, every-day, tra-la-la, I am Queen of the Polyverse.
And then, thunk.
Suddenly you aren't flying along anymore. In fact, you are mired down. Your fingers are wiggling helplessly, but no words are flying out. Your screen is half-empty. Your word count is stagnant.
You have reached the Sticking Point.
Where to go from here? What to do? Stupid story--stupidest story ever. Stupidest character. Dumbest plot. Hapless writer. Why do this at all? Surely scrubbing floors would be easier. I am the Queen of Nothing.
Starting a story is a rush. Finishing it is a downright bore.
I'm at 3400 words, give or take, and I got about 2500 left to go. I got the characters, setting, problem all introduced, but how to cleverly resolve those three things together, in such a way that the reader won't say, lip curling upward, yeah, I could see that coming.
Someone told me once when you get stuck in a story, you should have a man with a gun walk into the room. Maybe I'll try that. Maybe it will work.
Alas, I am fortune's fool.
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4 comments:
Forget the gun. Have a man pull up in a U-Haul truck. At this moment I can think of nothing more terrifying . . .
Ayah, that's pretty scary! The whole moving process is pretty scary--but as long as you don't park the Uhaul containing everything you own in the parking lot of a motel on the outskirts of El Paso and wake up the next morning to find it gone, you should consider your move a success! Good luck!
Alfonso with a squirt gun. Poppy with a cannon. A Huitzil with a blowdart. A Ranger with a loaded fan.
I know you'll think of something completely beyond the pale.
How about a gila monster with someone's ear in its mouth?
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