You'd think the second book would have been the problem. After the excitement of the first, I might be a little intimidated, unsure if the second measured up. But, no. It's this third one that feels like a large boulder being pushed up a steep hill on a cold night after a few drinks in a Halifax pub. I wonder about it. Usually, it's at night when the bladder has ordered the march to the bathroom and I'm back in bed with cold feet and a wandering mind. The middle of the night is where self-loathing lives. It's quite comfortable there. Questions form. Is it that I'm tackling time travel in this novel? Am I worn out? Is it because it's awful? Am I awful? Will I ever write again? What's that sound downstairs? Do we have rodents? Am I getting stupider? Is stupider a word? I should know that if I write books. I should be better at all things word-related. And so on. 

But sometimes these questions form while I stare at the screen. After two novels with professional editors, I'm painfully aware of my mistakes so I try to avoid awkward sentences. I erase the -ing verbs and strike out the words very and that. I know that the early drafts are not where you wage this battle, not if you have a hope of finishing. And yet, I read the previous lines aloud and reach to the upper right corner of the keyboard for my favorite button, DELETE. I've grown so fond of it that I reach for it in my mind during live conversations as I hear words dribble from my mouth. Delete! Undo! But life doesn't permit editing (photo filters and social media aside). Many sentences die shortly after being formed. I'm relentless. Soon there'll be nothing but the opening sentence in which I break one of the big rules of novel-writing: opening with a character waking up. So, it might not survive either. 

Unlike the previous books, I attempted to outline this novel. If you're not familiar with the world of writing you might not have heard that there are two ways of tackling a novel: plotting and pantsing. Plotting is when you have a general or painfully detailed outline of the entire project and you lay it out in front of you like a map. Pantsing–from the expression flying by the seat of your pants–is not planned, it's a process of discovery. With the first two, I had a hint of who the characters were and what would happen but the rest revealed itself as I wrote. It sounds kind of magical. Sometimes it feels a bit like that. But it has its challenges. It can feel like a monster at times. I start to lose track of my train of thought and end up having to reread things. Either way, you end up with a lot of words to work and rework into a cohesive tale. 

Actually, this third novel was fully written during Nanowrimo which takes place every November. National Novel Writing Month is a self-imposed deadline for writers. We start a writing project on November 1st and aim to complete fifty thousand words by the 30th. I did it! But, as you've already guessed, it needed some work. I put it away for a long time and read through it this year with a red pen, trashing most of the plot after a third of the way through. That's when I decided that an outline was the way to go. So I took an online course about a "Fifteen Beat Structure" and tried to hammer my story into that model. It's the sort of formula you see in every movie you've watched, ensuring that certain events happen to the characters at the right time: the inciting incident, the all-is-lost moment, and so on. But my story refuses to line up. For a while, my main character got stuck in the kitchen staring at a woman washing dishes at the sink. She kept saying significant things that would change the course of everything, then deleting them. She'd try again and get deleted before she even finished the sentence. Finally, she backtracked out of the room and into an entirely different scene to take on a new path. 

I've talked before about the dizzying omnipotence of a fiction writer. For someone who has trouble making simple decisions in daily life, it can feel overwhelming, this ability to make characters say and do whatever you want. After a while, you long for a structure of some kind. That's why I thought the outline would work. Instead, I'm discovering that I'm more comfortable not knowing where I'm going. I like to be surprised, even if it's me surprising me. Does that make any sense? Probably not.

Another thing that occurred to me during this morning's tooth-brushing session (two full minutes, another time ripe for ideas), there's not enough humor in this tale. And there bloody should be. Human beings slipping in and out of time like it's a daily chore ought to laugh at their circumstances after they've spent a lot of time questioning their sanity. You see? Now I want to rewrite that first third, the bit that should be left alone in hopes of carrying on. Resist, resist the urge to hit that button...

Or, and this one really frightens me, I'm lazy. Am I? I might be. 

So, possibilities for current writer's block:

• I have no business writing sci-fi/fantasy
• I have no business writing anything at all
• Getting stupider and stupider
• Real-time editing killing my writing mojo
• Outlines aren't for me
• The main character needs to lighten up
• I'm just plain lazy

I will continue to chronicle this writing journey if only to let other writers know they're not alone and to remind myself how messy this whole thing can be. Maybe I should take up knitting.  

Have you ever struggled to complete a project? Did you give up or keep at it?