Last night I figured out a story problem I’d been worrying at for about 4 months. I knew what the character in my story had done, but I couldn’t figure out why he had done it. And that, of course, was the key to the story. Well, once I figured that out, large parts of the story just about wrote themselves. I think that if I ever get this one done, it’s going to be a really good one. And then maybe I can go back and fix the one that I got not-quite-written last year. At this rate, this book is going to take about 7 years to write.

In one of his essays about how to write (I think it was actually in Cat’s Pajamas), Ray Bradbury said that you should stop writing while you still know what’s going to happen next. That way, the next time you start writing, you know how to start.

Apparently, if you ignore that advice — if you write until you don’t know what happens next, you’ll spend the next 5 or 6 months trying to figure it out.

So, hopefully, since I left off before I was done, and I know exactly what needs to happen next, I can actually get through this chapter before the end of the year. 😉

So, Chris, how’s your part of the story coming?