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?

Writing Through...

"When its easy, when it just comes to you, when you feel like you're one heck of a writer, that's when you're probably tired and it's time to call it a day." So says writer Joe Nesbo, in the August 2010 volume of The Writer

What about on those days when it isn't easy? The days where you are slogging through trying to reach your daily count? Those days when you don't particularly feel like a good writer, don't feel inspired or briliant?

Keep going for 20 minutes, then decide. Another piece of writerly advice that seems to fall true. Most often if you continue writing for more than twenty minutes you can get yourself unstuck.

Give yourself permission to be wrong. Go ahead, use that word choice you know is not quite right. Allow yourself to move on. Mark the area that's bothering you and go and deal with it later, when you're in a better frame of mind.

Write backstory. Many times if I am "stumped" I'll allow myself to write backstory. I really enjoy writing "backstory" and even though I don't use it all it always helps me. These are the stories I always have running in the back of my mind for each character and getting it in writing can be a lot of fun.

Change POV for a little while. I recently added a second POV to my novel. It just seemed natural at the time. I had a spell of boredom with my main character. I decided to write from the contagonist's viewpoint for one writing session and I was hooked. Its a lot of fun to journal from another POV even if you don't end up using that. (Pepper recommended writing a journal from the perspective of my villain and I think he's been a richer character ever since I took her advice).

Remember its supposed to be fun. Give yourself permission for it to be fun again, even if just for a day. Today is the day you will enjoy your writing, try something new, stop thinking about deadlines, quit worrying about the market and write what you want to write. Just for you and God.
What about you? What helps you get "unstuck"?

Julia enjoys writing women's fiction whenever she can find a chair free of smushed peanut butter sandwiches and lego blocks. She is a wife and homeschooling mama of two littles. She also enjoys reading and reviewing books for The Title Trakk, a Christian review site.