I don’t think I’m unlike most writers. I typically start with a great beginning and a good idea as to how I want things to end. It’s filling in all that middle stuff that drives me nuts.
For instance, I have an idea for a story about a woman who acts out her dreams. She ultimately starts having a recurring dream about being stalked by a man who wants her dead. During one of those dreams she takes a letter opener (conveniently located on her bedside table) and stabs her sleeping husband to death. Then, there’s a trial and her lawyer tries to convince the jury she’s not guilty of murdering her husband – that she was acting in self defense against a crazy man who just happened not to be real. I won’t tell you the outcome (yes, I’ve thought that through) but I just can’t get started nor can I figure out how to get from A to B.
OK – you try filling in all the other stuff. It’s hard. It makes my head hurt. Maybe I don’t have the patience. Probably. I tend to want things done NOW. It’s amazing I can even get through a story at all without skipping to the end to find out what happens. Reading “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” nearly killed me. It’s long. Really long. My granddaughter had no problem, though. She’s 8, she doesn’t yet know what it feels like when life is like a roll of toilet paper – the closer you get to the end of the roll, the faster the sheets fly by. That’s how it is after 50 (or half-way to dead, as my husband puts it). Oh, to have 90% of my life still ahead of me – maybe then I could come up with that middle stuff.
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