Pink Think: “I started a second novel seven times and I had to throw them away.” – Amy Tan
photo from photl.com
I know. I’m probably setting a record for the most posts in a week in a long time.
I have been working away quite happily on a historical fantasy that was fun at every turn, complete with giant rodents, dragons and mermaids set in the Philippines. Very Princess Bride-ish. (I skimmed through PB recently by the way and was, in turns, charmed and annoyed with the off-tangents. The movie was much better.)
And then it came to a screeching halt.
I couldn’t get past this one scene. I had pretty much abandoned my outline and was going from adventure to adventure wondering where in the world was my story going and was it worth chasing it down?
Should I keep going, I wondered? And then came an omen.
I discovered that one of my kids was writing a story with a scene that I had envisioned in my mind – the crux of this new novel – and I couldn’t write it without feeling like I would be inadvertently plagiarizing hers.(Some evenings, I write alongside my kids who write their own stories in longhand, and it’s a very cozy feeling.)
8,000 words is painful to say goodbye to. Who knows, maybe I’ll resurrect them someday, but I really doubt it.
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