Saving Grace Goes into a Holding Pattern

I decided today to officially set aside Saving Grace at least until Tuesday, December 15. That’s when the first read-through is supposed to happen.

The motivation for that decision has been a couple of days of mental wheel spinning and a plethora of alternate plot ideas that threatened to stall the entire project.

In the last post, Saving Grace Hits a Snag, I talked about not wanting to work on the story at all that day, but that such lulls are not unusual. It was a struggle to get any work done on the story that day, but I did have an answer to prayer before the day ended.

The last thing I did before turning off the computer and setting aside Saving Grace that day was pray for guidance to either continue the work or for peace to let it rest. Then I read other things a little while and went to bed.

Before I could go to sleep, an idea for an alternate opening sequence came to mind and before long, I had to get up and write it down. I went back to bed having jotted two hand written pages and notes on getting started with the following day’s work! I thought I was off and running again.

Today was another struggle, though, and about halfway through the day, I decided what I needed was a break from the story. Prayer always accompanies those sorts of decisions, but it does seem like the appropriate thing to do is set it aside and work on something else.

The current plan is to check the writing compass again on December 15, which is when I’d hoped to start the read through. I may start reading then, but there is also a good possibility that I’ll kick that goal back to two weeks from today, give myself two full weeks of no Saving Grace, then do a read through.

So far today, that has been a good decision. I have worked on other things most of the day, including getting started on the color phase for a current portrait and reviewing ideas for other stories.

I don’t know if one story will take control the next two weeks or not, but one thing I’m planning to do is work the snowflake method of story development in the correct order. That means developing characters, story line and all the rest before any story writing takes place. I think I can do that for two weeks. We’ll see.

I’ll also use that sort of development, plotting and planning to maintain the goal of 3,000 words a day each writing day and 700 words of fiction for each writing day.