Oh No, WriMo!

While working on my NaNoWriMo novel I have been reading Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Them Go by Les Edgerton which I downloaded to my Kindle when Amazon put nine books on writing on sale for $0.00 in support of NaNoWriMo. The first time I got in a jam with my story, Hooked actually helped get me out of it, but for the most part the book has been a detriment to me writing. By the end of the first or second chapter I wanted to reorder the chapters in my book, something that would not be too difficult to do and I figured I would get to that either by the end of the month, or next month while editing.

When I hit my first blockage and was ready to chuck the book, I took my dogs for a walk and on that walk a new vision came to me and I saw where my book should be gong plot-wise. That got me back to writing and resulted in another 10,000 words or so. Things were looking good, then I did a really stupid thing; I kept reading Hooked. My problems really started with Chapter Three: The Inciting Incident, the Initial Surface Problem, and the Story-Worthy Problem. Although I had an Initial Surface Problem that I was going to move from Chapter 16 (my chapters are small) to Chapter 1, and I had a Story-Worthy Problem, introduced with an amazingly heavy hand in my original Chapter 3, I did not have an Inciting Incident for the Story-Worthy Problem.

And my writing ground to a halt four days ago and has been there ever since.

I don't know if it will start back up again. The lack of an  Inciting Incident for the Story-Worthy Problem made me realize how vague my Story-Worthy Problem really is, which has made me reconsider the whole thing. Also, the more I write the more my main character (MC) seemed to be shifting from that character I though was the protagonist to someone else and her story if even vaguer than my original MC. So, here I sit, broken-hearted...

Or not. The holiday is coming and five days off of work and yes, there are things to do during those days, lots of things to do actually, but should things come together in my mind and should 5,000 words a day spew out of my for three or four days, I would be back on schedule.

So there is hope! There is always hope. What there is not is an Inciting Incident for the Story-Worthy Problem. Crap!