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The “Tiny Dark Closet” Phase of Writing a Novel
Help I’m stuck — no, actually, please DON’T help
I’m stuck in my current novel.
It was all going so well, for quite a while there. That is, after the first few months of the pandemic, which distracted me so badly I couldn’t do any creative work. That was hard, but eventually I stopped baking so many crumpets and lemon bars and skillet breads and crème brûlées, found a rhythm, and started writing again.
Well, and then there was a very intrusive copy edit on the novel that comes before this one, which knocked me off my game for a while. It took some time to recover from the ill effects of that. To un-break my voice.
But once I got over those things and found my way back into this novel one more time, the writing was clicking smoothly along. I was writing most every day, making my word-count goal easily. Occasionally they would be the wrong words, but never more than a handful. I would notice I’d made a misstep (usually in the last few hundred words of any day’s writing, when I was tired and just ready to be done), and I would fix them and move forward.
Easy-peasy.
But last week, I pushed forward as usual, and…steered all the way into an entirely wrong detour. I know where I’m trying to go, and I know what…
