The Story Never Ends

Why can I never seem to finish writing? It's 3am. Since my "retirement" from a real job, my schedule has turned upside down. During the daylight hours I am normal. I clean the house. I take care of the cats. I do laundry. I run errands. I go to see one of my clients and do some work and have lunch with them. I stop by the bar and have a drink with my friends who are just getting out of work. I take care of the books and the admin for the business. Send out the invoices, pay the bills. At 7pm or so, I take a two or three hour nap - a restless nap, not really sleeping, just resting my body and my eyes. My mind is racing. What's wrong with this story? Why isn't it working? Why the hell did the protaganist go ahead and say or do what she did? It doesn't make sense - it's not consistent with her decision making process.

But she needs to do that, otherwise the plot would not move in the right direction. But she wouldn't do that. Gotta fix that. She can't do that unless she has a good reason for doing it. What reason would work? How far back in the story - her personal story, or the main plot line of the book - do I have to go to fix this up. What if... yeah, what if back in chapter 3, when she first learns of the antagonist and starts to get a glimmer of what is going on... so this needs to happen then...

But if that happens, then chapter 6 is way, way out of place. Chapter 6 really needs to be split into two different chapters. Half of it needs to happen between chapter 3 and 4, and the other half can't happen until way after chapter 20 if it happens at all. Ugh.

It's 9:30pm. I can't sleep. Fire up the computer. Let it boot up. Start the coffee. Go out on the porch, check on the bunnies and have some nicotine. This is going to take soooo much work.

And now it's 3am. My eyes are swimming. It's not really fixed. I've spent hours and hours cutting, pasting, rewriting, getting annoyed. It's not working. The "what if" still doesn't work. I have to go see my client at 9am. I'm not going to sleep. Might as well keep plugging away.

I hate writing. I hate everything about it. It takes so much time, it's just painful. It will never, ever be done... why the hell am I wasting my time on this???

AH! That's it! Write one paragraph. Six sentences at the end of chapter 2, delete three sentences in chapter 3. Move the first half of chapter 6 back where it belongs and yes - delete the second half of chapter 6 - will need to pad this out to keep the cadence and rythym consistent, but I'll worry about that later. Will save it off just in case. What a shame! I loved that part. It was fun, and funny and some really nice writing. It sings. I will have to find a place for it somehow.

Night all, my characters and my children! I'll see you tomorrow night. I can't wait to see how this all turns out for you!