Uber Author Vs Uber Alpha Hero

Mood today: DO NOT KISS THAT DAMN FROG



I mean it! You're soooo going to regret it. The frog has a dastardly black heart and he'll make you cry all night.

This is the hardest book to write. I can't seem to get in sync with its demands.

All my books have different processes. Some of them insisted on being written late at night. One or two made me sing the same song in my head over and over before I could even start writing. A few drove me nuts with their intense emotions that popped up while I was on a roof and could NOT do a damn thing writing-wise.

But I had always been able to go with the flow and made it work. The words would come; the characters cooperated eventually; the scenes moved sequentially.

Not with Virtually Hers, my current work-in-progress. Or should I say, hell-in-progress. This has been a most frustrating process, with its start-stop and stuck-jump-mull-jerk around ways. I can't seem to find a good time to please the Muse, meaning, I'd stare helplessly at the screen or my mind wanders or absolute nonsense gets written and deleted.

To make it worse, the story isn't coming in one long thread like all the others. It has decided to give me vignettes, and as hard as I tried to start with Chapter One, Scene One, and go from there, this story isn't going that way. I have scenes, here and there, helter-skelter, and I have no idea whether I'd be able to connect them. I have NEVER written this way before and I'm starting to get panic attacks that this story isn't happening.

Having written in a straight line all my life, with Once Upon A Time as the start and The End as the ending sentence, I'm flummoxed and gobsmacked at how disjointed my manuscript is. I know the story in my head, so why can't I put it down on paper in some form of order? Very strange.

Of course, the hero isn't helping. He's the most complex man I've ever written and this book is mostly from his POV. since Book One is about the heroine trying to figure out his identity, Book Two--Virtually Hers--is all about him. Okay, mostly from his POV, but so far, he's manipulating me like he did her in Book One. Last night, I stomped on his neck and say, "Look, Mr. Secret Monitor, you NEED me as much as I NEED you, so quit being such a control freak and let me peel you like an onion." To which he gave me a long, cool, silent look, the way that would make everyone shiver BUT ME, HIS CREATOR. I ground my heel even harder, to make a point, and he didn't even wince, the bastard. A slow smile formed on that tough-as-nails face and he whispered, "I don't peel easily."

Sure, sure, you think I'm insane, having mental fights with a character as if there is a real wrestling match going on. There is a lot of invisible bloodletting in the life of a writer and sometimes, we have to hurt those we love the most to make them tell us their secrets. And Mr. Secret Monitor has a way of slipping away that makes me bang my head against the keyboard. A lot.

Anyway, today I go back to Hell's POV. That's my revenge. She's reasonably cooperative, especially when it comes to torturing her monitor.

Need I also add that tonight I'll be doing my taxes? Oh yeah. Another brain-dead evening ahead.

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