Desert Times in Writing

Writing has been a struggle the last week or so. Nothing seems to be coming together with ease these days. It’s definitely one of those desert times that requires nothing more involved than simply putting one foot ahead of the other.

Work on Perfect Opportunities fine tuning has stalled with questions of genre. Mystery, suspense or literary? Doubts have brought the process to a standstill.

These days, I know enough about genre identification to know how to categorize ideas almost from the moment they come into being and to write them accordingly. But Perfect Opportunities was started years ago and before I knew about genre identification, so I’m having to do now something that would have ideally been done at the beginning. Consequently, I’ve been exploring ideas and trying to feel my way with each of the three most likely genres.

The process has provided moments of illumination and enlightenment, but has left me questioning decisions more often than not. It’s not fun.

So this past weekend, after several fruitless hours, I prayed about it, then set it aside for the weekend. All of that effort seemed wasted, but I know it all is part of the process.

To avoid a completely wasted weekend, I turned next to the first read through on Parting Gifts, which was completed in first draft in June. I really didn’t want to do this, either, because every story I’ve finished seems to come undone in the editing phase. I just know it’s going to happen with this one, too, so I dreaded the first read through.

As it turned out, that was the best thing I could have spent the weekend doing. It was completed within twelve hours (including interruptions) and although it’s rough (isn’t that the reason they’re called rough drafts?), the overall storyline is good.

So what’s next?

The next major thing will be National Novel Writing Month, which begins officially November 1. I’ll also be participating in an “in-house” word challenge at ChristianWriters.com in November.

Until then, I’ll probably leave Perfect Opportunities to itself, do a little editing on Parting Gifts and concentrate more on the Daily Writing Exercise than on a specific story.

After that, only God knows. I’ll be editing something. Since I like to let manuscripts rest for at least two weeks between completion and read through and since I think two months are better, the editing will probably be on Parting Gifts.

Unless, of course, I receive direction on Perfect Opportunities!