I’ve been thinking and talking a lot about my writing process recently, and have come to think of it as a giant puzzle that I need to put together—say, a thousand pieces or so—without benefit of a picture to see what the finished puzzle should look like.
The process is, in short, a frustrating mystery to me, something designed to make me want to occasionally pull my hair out by the roots.
But there is one thing I’ve figured out: I always have a tiny moment of panic when I’m two-thirds of the way through the book. A moment of wondering, what the hell happens now? I think it has something to do with being within striking distance of the end of the book and wondering about all those loose ends that still need to be tied. All those elements that I threw into the book, thinking that they’d lead somewhere and I’d figure it out later, when the lightning bolt of inspiration finally struck me. Only later is now here and I still haven’t figured it out. Two-thirds of the way through is when I start thinking about word count and all the things that still need to be crammed into, say, a hundred pages.
Two-thirds is when I ask myself what I was thinking with this book. Why did I think this book about these people was such a great idea? The synopsis is no help, because of course the synopsis, as I’ve already discussed, is a patchwork of cobbled-together ideas that lead nowhere helpful.
Two-thirds of the way is where I get hopelessly, frustratingly, maddeningly STUCK.
If you’re wondering why I’m whining about this now, I’ll tell you. It’s because I’m two-thirds of the way through my February, 2009 book, A Friendly Love Affair, and I am … wait for it … stuck. Like a saber-tooth tiger in a tar pit. Like a fly in a Venus fly trap. Like a bear with a paw in a trap.
STUCK, I tell you. Stuck, stuck, STUCK.
The good thing is that, having been through this so-called process several times before, I know that being stuck right now is normal for me. I will get myself un-stuck. I’ve done it before and will do it this time, even if I can’t, at this very moment, see HOW.
Somehow, I’ll get it done. But until then I’m … yeah, well, I’m just stuck.