My Writing Was Stalled. Here's The Brainstorm That Let Me Fix It Easily
I promised last week to share with you what’s going on with my writing, so here goes.
I was making good progress on my second book, until I wasn’t. Some of it was circumstances outside my control (yes, hurricanes, I’m talking to you). Some of it was hitting the middle of my story, and as any novelist will tell you, it’s referred to as the messy middle for a reason.
In any case, I got to a point where I just felt stymied. I didn’t feel very much in touch with my characters (see aforementioned hurricanes and interruptions), and I just didn’t have the words in me. It wasn’t writers block as such, but I was blocked.
If you’ve been reading these posts for a while, you’ll know I’m a big fan of the Save the Cat Writes a Novel story beats. Finally I thought, well, I know how it ends, so I’m just going to skip ahead and write the ending. So that’s what I did. I skipped right over the last two beats of Act II and jumped into Act III.
Boom! Dam gone, words flowing. I expect to have Act 3 finished by the end of this week. When that happens, I’ll go back and write the missing scenes from Act II. Or maybe I’ll stick it in the virtual drawer for a couple of weeks and clear my head first. . . we shall see.
What I’m Reading
Death Among the Diamonds by Fliss Chester
Cressida Fawcett is a party girl, 1920s version. Born into wealth and with ample financial means, she maintains a happily single life, attached to her pug dog, Ruby, her fast Bugatti sportscar, and the parties and hijinks she loves so much. She also has a good eye for design.
But after some important diamonds are stolen from her best friend’s mother, Cressy agrees to leave London and go to the country for a weekend. She wants to help figure out who stole the diamonds, and also rescue her friend’s mother from her awful selection of new draperies.
She certain doesn’t expect to find the dead body of a worker in the main hall when she comes down to breakfast the next morning!
A quick, entertaining read.
The Mysterious Case of the Missing Motive by Michele Pariza Wocek
This was another ARC (advance reader copy) that was provided for me, by an author who’s new to me.
Emily’s life has fallen apart. Her fiance has broken up with her, thrown her out of their shared apartment, and stolen all her money. What is she going to do? Well, fortunately her Aunt Tilde offers her a job and a place to live in the small town of Redemption.
With nowhere else to go, and no job prospects in the city because her ex-fiancee seems to be blackballing her, she accepts the offer, even though she has no idea what the job will be.
It turns out the job is managing a brand-new detective agency, and the “detectives” are Aunt Tilde and three friends. Oops! What could possibly go wrong? (Or maybe a better question would be, what could go right?")
Annoyances, mystery, and hilarity ensue. . .
This was an entertaining book, but sadly, it’s filled with inappropriate word choices, as you’ll see below. I found myself being frequently pulled out of the story to figure out what word should have been in a given sentence. I have no idea whether this is a quirk of the author’s, or whether an editor really messed up, but either way it reduced my enjoyment of the book.
Notable Quotes
Both these quotes are from The Charity Shop Detective Agency by Peter Boland.
Before she’d retired, Partial Sue had been a talented, in-demand accountant — brutal, some might say. Ledgers had been known to tremble in her presence.
The essence of a great description is that it helps the reader immediately form a picture in her mind. Reading this, I visualize an old-fashioned accounting ledger book with its pages quivering. Here’s another quote from the same book.
It was a building in the loosest sense of the word, having more in common with underpasses and multistorey car parks than with the traditional buildings around it that were far easier on the eye.
Doesn’t this conjure visions of acres of concrete with no observable architectural features of interest?
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Wise Words
It’s time to play! Read the excerpt, and decide which word fits best. Your choices are regulated or relegated. (And just to remind you, don’t read anything into the order I list them in. It’s alphabetical.)
She sat in the front seat while I was _____ to the back, which meant I couldn’t have the conversation I really wanted to have with my aunt.
The Mysterious Case of the Missing Motive by Michele Pariza Wacek
As always, we’ll discuss the answer next week.