Title changes, re-outlining, and contemplating giving up

Fourteen months is the appropriate pace for blog posts, right? I haven't been blogging lately because I have little to share. I've always struggled with it, coming up with something to say that anyone in the cyberworld would care about. But it's more difficult these days because I've barely been writing.

Writing, for me, means any part of the noveling process. Outlining, drafting, reading through the draft, marking it up, revising, proofreading... So, all that. All that's what I haven't been doing. Last May I began the process of working with my cover artist, and a few moths later I sent Beyond the Midnight Mountain to my editor. Last May I also began what turned into a year-and-a-half break from writing.

My editor and I emailed back and forth a lot...and there's a lot of work I have to do. Rewriting. Which I hate. It paralyzes my brain.

The needed rewrites are so extensive that I'm starting over with the outline stage. My editor says I can still use much of my material as-is, so I won't be re-drafting those parts, but I'm shuffling the pacing around, inventing new bits of excitement (or trying to), and re-brainstorming just about the whole story.

It's not fun. I'm the rare fiction writer that struggles with not having ideas. Like, at all. The new ideas rising up are mostly suggestions from her. And that's why my book suffers from chronic blandness to begin with. Characters? Well developed. Setting? Dang interesting. Stuff actually happening? Not so much.

So often I waver in my career decision. I determine I'll sit down and just do the work because writing books is the only thing I can see myself doing for the rest of my life. Then I remember I'm no good at writing and I should just go ahead let down everyone who believed in me, and save myself any more wasted hopes, because you're not magically good at something just because you really want to be.

In other news, my other novel Simi has a new working title. At the moment it goes by A Web of Every Color. I don't know if I like it, but it's better than Simi.