Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Chapter Three Blockitis


There is a giant sized binder on my desk filled with stories that popped into my mind and into which I hurriedly jotted down my thoughts, not wanting to forget a word of my future masterpiece. Stories that seemed so well-developed in my head sometimes make me wonder if I was half asleep when I wrote the first couple of chapters--because that's where these stories generally run out of steam, Chapter Three. A couple of times I've gone so far as to write out a basic outline (not something I usually do since I'm a pantser), but even this wasn't enough to help these stories develop into full blown manuscripts.

 I realized today that maybe I had started some of these stories before their time. One in particular had my mind racing with possibilities and would, I think, actually fit into my forthcoming series rather nicely with only a bit of tweaking. In the past I've cannibalized certain passages, and in one case I've stolen a whole scene from a completely unrelated story that I reworked into one of my upcoming paranormal releases.

Of course, most of these orphaned stories don't have enough oomph to become full sized novels, and in reality, I really love writing shorter stories, so maybe there is some kind of mental thing going on. Still, I was paging through it this morning while I was caffeinating, and I had to wonder, Why can't I quit you?

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