Sidelining a Stall

Every writer gets stuck from time to time. My latest release, Not Bound By Blood (http://amzn.to/1NpgmhH), had a long road of bumps, halts, and starts. I recently came across a journal posting from 2012. At the time, I had reached the middle of the story, knew where I wanted to get, but not how to get there.

I agonized for weeks -- distracted myself by fleshing out scenes for later in the story -- but was at a loss on how to fill in the gap. I was stuck.

My solution was to push myself away from the torture of a silent keyboard and turn to an entirely different creative activity. My particular choice of escape at that time was to take on a quilting project. There is something about choosing scraps of fabric and shuffle them about to see how they complement each other that soothes me.

All the while, my subconsciouscontinued working at sorting out that story's plot, without my even being aware. As I worked at the repetitious activity of feeding tiny pieces of material past the machine's needle, images and scenes would pop uninvited into my head. I allowed them to float past, knowing they would find a lodging spot in the recesses of my brain and await my future invitation to see the light of day on my computer screen.

When the words and pictures inside my head felt ready to coalesce into a solution to my dilemma, I returned to the writing, refreshed and ready to pound the keys and shape the rest of the novel into shape.

It took several vacations-on-the-shelf before I finally wrote 'the end' to Not Bound By Blood.  It was released in May 2016 and I'm now anticipating the excitement of reading several promised reviews from faithful readers.

Thank you to all who enjoy the tales I write.