“I’ve always run by the hierarchy of ‘If not funny, interesting. If not interesting, hot. If not hot, bizarre. If not bizarre, break something.” — Jon Stewart

I’ve been working for several weeks on my second book in my first lesbian romance series. (I can’t wait to officially announce my debut novel! It’s with my editor at the moment.) But this narrative hasn’t been like the first, which seemed to come to me all at once like I was channeling some long forgotten tale. This second book has dropped into my head in bits and pieces: random conversations, glimpses of scenes, feelings.

For the last couple of weeks I’ve also had this unsettling notion that all of what I’ve written is crap. If I’m feeling bored with it and I’m the one in control of the story, then there’s definitely a problem. I was talking with a friend of mine about it and mentioned that I had written myself into a corner. More accurately, I wrote myself into a ditch, some sad rut that I haven’t been able to steer out of.

Then it hit me.

This story I’ve been laboring over is bogged down because it got off track. Somewhere after chapter two I took a side road to nowhere. But all is not lost, because what I realized is that this story is actually part of book four in the series. Or book four is part of this book… At any rate the two storylines fit together like puzzle pieces filling in the dead spaces in both. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. I think I was lost in a maze of my own creation. Not only that, when scenes and words become too precious to be reconsidered, or edited, or cut, then you may be your worst enemy.

Make strong coffee. Deconstruct. Amend. Revise. Rewrite.

Suddenly it all makes sense. The story has life again, and it’s a full one.

This goes out to my fellow writers… Has this ever happened to you?