And the Winner is . . .

By Keith N Fisher

I took everyone who commented, those who answered the questions got in twice. I put all the names in Excell, and randomized them. The winner is Melanie Goldmund. Please contact me at uvdutch57 at yahoo with your address so I can get your chocolate bar to you.

To all of you wonderful people, who offered suggestions for the blog, thank you. Also, thanks, to all who read and didn’t comment. I know there are many.

Now, let’s talk about writing. Have you ever been distracted? How many times have you set down to write and nothing comes to mind? I seem to be going through one of those times when everything I write, sucks. I finished Starcrossed, left Rebecca in a happy place, after recovering from alcoholism and a self centered existence. Then I searched through my list of projects, trying to find one that felt good to me.

I worked for a while on my SCI-FI dystopian, novel about a woman who gets trapped in circumstances beyond her control. Then, I went back to a novel about a woman who gets caught up in a mystery. The suspense is killing me. As the genre implies, there must be suspense on almost every page. I can’t let the action wane or my reader will stop reading.

To make matters worse I suddenly realized the plot is similar to, The Net, a movie with Sandra Bullock. I went back to change things and make it my own story, but it was discouraging.

Going back into my project file, I opened a manuscript I wrote several years ago. I looked for ways to improve the writing and tighten the plot, but I couldn’t get excited about it either. Through all this, computer chess has elevated itself in my list of priorities, and my critique group has been on hiatus.

What do you do when this happens to you? I got lucky and took my laptop while playing taxi driver the other day. During the down time while I waited for school to end, I opened my story, ignored what I’d written before, and moved ahead with it. I’ll fix the other parts latter, but for now, I’m writing.

Writing suspense is still hard, but moving forward worked for me, what works for you?

Good luck with your writing---see you next week.