I had fully intended to write about the drudgery of following up a first piece with a trudging second one, and until yesterday I could have. Yesterday was magic, though, the moments I live for.

I love the puzzle aspects of creating stories. I love thinking up strategies, genres, series, I love the ideation that occurs when you get a good concept in mind. The generation, the synthesis. It’s fucking magic.

There always, always, always comes a point in the middle where things go sideways. I get stuck. The 3,000 word count days become 300. It’s like being lost in the woods with a lamp and a general sense of I’m going that way to guide me. It’s slow, and it’s the worst.

It’s the moment the demons start calling. It’s the part of the process where voices in my head which aren’t mine get louder than I’m comfortable with. It would be easy, so easy to stop when I reach this point.

But I don’t. I keep going. Step by step. 300 word day by 300 word day. And what happens, if I keep crawling through this part of the process, is that eventually the forest thins, the words come easier, and there’s an inevitable moment when everything falls into place. It’s almost like a click, and when I feel that moment, everything falls into place.

I can’t say I want to do both drafting and editing at the same time going forward, but in this instance, I had fallen into the thick of it well before I had to edit. A day or two back into the process, and I’ve got the space I need to sort out the problems I was stuck on. The whole thing flows, now, moving more or less smoothly from beginning to end.

There’s still more work. I have about four scenes left to write. There will be big picture revision, rewriting, line editing, proofreading. Layers and layers and layers.

But the base is there. And that’s exciting.

BH ❤