Sorry I’m a little late today, ladies.  Busy week.  This cat above is what I feel like these days.

I’ve been a bit stalled up these past couple weeks.  Renee Lynn Scott tells me that she gets stalled at the 60K mark too.  And though I don’t enjoy when others share my struggles, it is nice sometimes to know I’m not alone. 

So, anyway, because I’m stalled, I’ve been trying to read back over what I’ve written and see what’s not quite “right.”  

I’m a plotter.  I’d planned things out; I had my entire story blueprint.  But, though I had the story, something about my characters wasn’t fitting into my blueprint very well. 

And of course I had that moment where I thought, “Why do I plot when I’m just going to have to adjust it all later anyway?”  Here’s what I decided:

First, I think adjustment is inevitable.  At least for most of us, plotters or pantsers alike.  (If not, you’re way way more lucky than me.)  Any time you put more than two characters together on paper, you have to consider how they all feel and how they all react. So, when you are dealing with, say, 5 or 7 important characters, as I am, I have to see how they overlap. Which causes me to have to probe the motivations of 5-7 (albeit fake) people. It’s emotionally exhausting. Why would they do that? Would they do that? How do they feel when this happens? It’s all so tiresome sometimes.

Second of all, though I thought the story worked on the offset with the characters I’d devised, now that I’m 2/3 through their story, I’ve gotten to know them better through actually writing them.  And since that’s how I get to know them better, it’s not really strange that what they’re really like is different than what I saw initially.  Why should fake people be any different than real people, after all?  I just have to decide how that’s going to change my overall story.

This whole exercise has made me revisit the whole plotting/pantsing issue.  Here I am, firmly into my second half, and now I have to essentially “replot.”  Yet, I know if I were to just write, my plot would go nowhere, I would be discouraged and throw my figurative hands up.  I’d decide I suck at this whole writing gig and give up for a month, only to throw out what I have and start again with some new storyline and go through the entire ordeal again. Talk about exhausting.  (I’m a bit dramatic that way.)

That’s why I’ve decided to just continue with my plotting. Even though it makes me batty sometimes.

How do you deal when you stall out?  Hal put a 20 questions method to get going again on her blog this week and I thought that was great.  Any other suggestions?  Some commiseration?  Is this process different for pantsers?