Trust Your Gut

You ever write something and think... "Man, that's pretty good."

But--something just isn't right.

You can't put your finger on it. The writing is solid for a first draft, so it isn't that.

But there is no escaping that feeling in your gut that something isn't right.

That's how I've been lately with my work-in-progress.

I write a really solid first two chapters. They flowed well, they made me smile in places, but every time I opened up my computer to write, I just got that feeling that something was WRONG.

Was I not supposed to write this story?
Was I being over sensitive and need to just keep writing? (because that's what we say to do when we are stuck, right?)
Did I need to get others opinions?

I had one other person read it and they were like, "I mean, it's good..."

But I don't want my intro chapter to be "It's good."

I want it to be GREAT. To make a reader giddy to read more. To capture a moment of OH MY GOODNESS  so they will keep reading into the wee hours of the morning.

It's good is not good enough, especially for a first chapter.

So I edited and edited... but still, that nagging feeling of disquiet.

I finally chucked the whole thing and rethought a whole new angle for the story and rewrote a new first chapter.

I take that back, I didn't even make it through the first chapter. It wasn't right either.

So yesterday, I took time to read a book. Just to enjoy someone else's writing. Then I took a few minutes and read the first page of numerous books on my bookshelf.

It was there.

That magic of the first page.

What was missing from mine.

So I spent another while dreaming about that first page. What was the big BANG that starts this story of mine.

Finally... it hit me. I was starting in the TOTAL wrong place. And instead of cutting chapters, I actually backed my story up a few months.

Within an hour, I had the first chapter and a half and it was singing to me, that place in my heart that KNEW something was wrong was now dancing with glee.

The writing still needs work because it is super rough. But the story is there, and it is singing again.

Moral of the story:

Trust your gut.
And sometimes just "writing" doesn't cut it. Sometimes you need to step back, step out, and look at it from a different perspective. Sometimes you need to research. Sometimes you need to READ. It will be different for each of us.

Let's chat!

Have you ever been stuck or felt like something just wasn't right? What did you do to push through?