Natasha Fondren

You know what I’m talking about, right? We don’t say those words. We don’t want to give it power by believing in its existence. We wouldn’t want to… summon it by accident.

For WIP #2, all I have is my main character’s name. Yes, that’s the sum total of my NaNo novel, of which the rest I have completely scrapped. What I wrote didn’t work. I don’t know what. Maybe it was the world, the other characters, the tone, the genre… I have no idea.

All that junk was cluttering up this novel’s room, and it needed a blank slate. So today I deleted it for good. Trash can and everything.

Yes, sometimes we crave the blank page again.

She’s special, I can tell. I keep trying on different clothes, different settings, different plots. Nothing is fitting.

This morning, I got a sentence. It’s a sentence that says everything about who she is:

“I’m not going to fill your fuckin’ mold,” she said.

A sentence! Woo-hoo!

Phew. I’m so relieved I could celebrate a day’s hard work because I got a sentence.

But I need to get back on my 5K a day program. I know that was years ago, but I need it back.

So I’m sitting here. I sometimes force myself in a chair for three hours, internet off, WIP open, and tell myself I’m not allowed to move for three hours. And I’m trying jobs on her, trying cities, trying genres, trying ages, trying situations.

A little niggle suddenly makes me wonder if she was talking to me when she said she wasn’t filling any molds.

Er.

I can see the appeal of stepping back and pretending our characters are fully-realized humans before we met them, that we’re just conduits or whatnot. Maybe I should try it: Hi, nice to meet you.

Both my WIPs are in the “sputtering” stage, where I can’t even write complete sentences yet. No whole pages polished, no chapters finished, nothing. Just a bunch of stutters.

Glenn is sick. If they send him home, then I really must write faster. Amazing how desperation helps you write faster. Needing the money has always pulled me through, except when it paralyzes me, LOL. I was sorta looking forward to my three months of no pressure. It’s life, I guess!

Universe, remember what I requested for this year?

So what do you do about it which must not be named?

I made a decision. I made a plan. I outlined the stories I’m writing in my thirty-sixth year, with a method to my madness, a plan for my career. And this other story is interfering. What am I supposed to do?

I’m so irritated.

To make matters worse, I feel horribly underqualified to write the story that’s bugging me. The story that’s interfering has nothing to do with what I want to write. For goodness sake, it’s commercial, I guess you’d say, almost on the literary side. I am a genre writer.

I suppose it’s okay if I flit back and forth, but what really irritates me, is that the planned story is not writing. I’ve written a buttload of crap and brainstorming and nothing holy is emerging.

When this happens, I always go back to pseudonym. Her stories write so easily, mostly, kind of. Well, easily in comparison. Why do they write so easily?

There’s an element of escapism, I suppose. And when Glenn’s away, particularly, there’s an element of loneliness seeking company with my characters. There’s always a passion… usually to comfort my character, to make her feel less lonely, empower her, give her her dreams.

When things are flowing, there’s always this big element of love. I feel like my heart is wide open. Just… loving.

I need to love my audience, I suppose. Angie laughed that I’d never written a spy thriller, having been “spyscribbler,” LOL. But the number one problem I had and never resolved, is that I didn’t know my audience, and I couldn’t write blind.

So maybe, instead of searching for my story, I need to search for my readers. I need that touchstone. Even if I’m wrong about my readers, I still need to write to them. I need to love them first.

I don’t know.

What do you do when a story isn’t writing? How do you feel when a story is flowing? What triggers that rush of words, when things are going well, when you get that “writer’s high?” Do you try to get an emotional sort of connection to your readers before you start your story?

Not yours. Not your career’s. What are the hopes and dreams for your novel, for the world inside your novel, for your characters?

You all know how badly I want to (finally!) write a story targeted for New York for NaNo. This is taking a whole new process, because usually I start with the romantic tension between two characters, their problems, and go from there.

I’m flying clueless and scared, here.

Worse, I’m also catching up on projects that I’d meant to be completed before NaNo began. I’ve also been writing past planned: the last novella was meant to be 52K, but it ended well over 60K. This one was supposed to end at 48K, but it’s still going steady at 52K. (I’ll probably have to split it in two parts to fit guidelines.) Plus I meant to squeeze in a 20K novella last week.

*sigh*

Anyway, I’m still determined to write a non-erotic novel targeted for New York. This month. But I still don’t “know” it. It’s not “ripe” yet.

One of the tips NaNo gives is, if you’re stuck, to write your hopes for the scene, or your hopes for the book. Not your hopes for getting an agent or getting published or getting a certain advance, but what emotions you hope your scene inspires in the reader, where you hope the scene will take the characters emotionally, how you hope the climax will play out.

What do you want your scene or your story to say? What kind of effect do you want it to have on the reader?

It loosens things up, for sure, especially if I haven’t done enough pre-writing imagining in my head, but I don’t have time to indulge in just waiting longer. I’m getting little glimmers of my story, but not yet enough to know where it begins.

So how do you knock things loose when you’re stalled? What are your hopes and dreams for your current story?