by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
La Brea Tar Pits, Los Angeles
I can’t explain it.
Here I was, almost a year ago, excited and ready to write my next Mike Romeo thriller. My outline was prepped, my fingers itching.
I wrote the first chapter—which was amusingly unlike other first chapters in these books. I had fun with it. It was my opening disturbance, but in an unanticipated form.
I printed my outline and had my trusted adviser, Mrs. B, take a look. She gave me a few suggestions and a thumbs up.
The plot proper took off with the killing of a meth head and the arrest of another, who becomes the client of Mike’s employer and conscience, lawyer Ira Rosen.
Sometimes writing is a fast joyride, like sliding down a snowy slope in a toboggan. That was this book. I was about 20k into it when I had to set it aside for a couple of weeks, due to some personal matters. Nothing major, just a series of events that sometimes happen. It’s called life. I plunked out words on some shorter projects.
When I came back to it, I found it hard to pick up the flow. Part of that I understood as the normal inertia that happens when you leave a story for a length of time. Day–to-day momentum is lost.
That’s happened to me in the past, and I’ve always managed to get the energy back in a day or two.
Not so this time.
It was weird. How weird? I’m glad you asked.
I draft in Scrivener, and set my total word goal and daily word goal. I click on the target icon and see just how many words I’ve written that day, and how far along I am toward my ultimate goal.
This time, I swear, it felt like I couldn’t get out of the 30k’s. My toboggan was on the junk pile. Now it was like trudging in snow shoes over the La Brea Tar Pits.
And it wasn’t as if the story was fighting me. I knew where it was going.
When I finally cracked 40k I thought, wait, what? Six months and this is all I have? My usual first drafting is three to four months.
I slogged on.
But then, as I looked at Act 3 rising from the muck, I made a snap decision to change the villain and the ending. Dedicated pantsers out there will say this is where you just go with your gut. Your gut’s always right.
Except when it isn’t. When I finally finished the draft I gave it to Mrs. B to read, and started planning my next book.
Her reaction was subdued. She liked most of it, but asked, “Why did you change the ending?”
“My gut told me to.”
“To be honest, I thought the other one was much better.”
Crud! Maybe my original gut was righter than my later gut.
I moped around for a day, then concluded (as is usually the case) that Mrs. B was right.
Now what? I had to scrap the last 30k and write the original ending, then tweak all the places in the book I had tweaked to accommodate the new ending.
So what was up with all that?
Every novel is a new experience, with fresh challenges. Sometimes those challenges push hard. Your brow wrinkles. Your word output may be about the same, but you feel like Sisyphus and that big rock. In that case you ought to pause and ask yourself why this is happening. The more experience you have and the more craft you know, the better you’ll be abled to answer.
Another possible reason for Tar Pit Trudge: The more we write, the higher our standards are (or should be). That sometimes means the writing goes slower because we’ve set a higher bar.
The alternative is “phoning it in,” which has happened with some highly successful authors. If you get to the sipping-Piña-Coladas-aboard-a-yacht level, it may not matter to you. For other writers, it does.
Know this: there is relief at the other end of the Tar Pits. When the final draft hits the mark, there’s a special kind of satisfaction that the phone-it-inners never feel. It’s the gratification of hard work paying off, the matchless pleasure of a job well done.
The book to which I refer is my ninth Mike Romeo thriller, Romeo’s Fire. It’s on sale today at the intro price of $2.99. I do feel a lovely satisfaction in getting it done, and further elation publishing it three weeks after the beta-edited and proofed draft came in. (In my trad pub days it would 
be a year or more before I saw a book in the store.) So sweet after the long journey.
And I’ve jumped on my toboggan again! I wrote the first 3k words of Romeo #10 this week. There’s a lot to be done, of course, and some trees to avoid, but there’s fresh snow on the slope and it’s a beautiful day.
Do you get different feel for each novel you write? Do you ever feel like it’s a slog? Or are you part of the “writing should always be effortless” crowd?
Being an old dog and, as an indie author, being responsible for every aspect of my book publication processes, it’s hard to remember that just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean nobody else does. I’m not talking about the writing. Everyone finds the system that works for them. Plotter, Pantser, or Plantser? Nitty gritty or beautiful words? How much violence? Profanity? Look at any best-selling book’s reviews on Amazon. There will be one and two star ratings along with the fours and fives, so you’ll never please everyone.
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