I am still at the stage where winter is beautiful (ask me again at the end of February and I will probably answer differently). It’s hard not to love it right now, though, when there are colorful lights glowing under veils of snow, mornings pale-blue with icy light, and the house smells of paperwhites and evergreen and honey-lavender caramels.

Tomorrow, Bob, Charlie and I will all be heading off for a long weekend away. There will be no internet, but there will be a Christmas curry dinner, family, boardgames, woods to hike, my favorite unicorn puzzle to assemble, and perhaps some pumpkin pancakes. And also books:

That fuzzy thing is an adorable plush bookworm my friend Kath sent us (I am currently running a LARP plot that involves a spooky library, which is currently infested with magical bookworms).

So yeah, I have plenty to read — especially as we also have the audiobook of the new Bartimaeus book (THE RING OF SOLOMON, Stroud) for the car ride! And hopefully I’ll have some peaceful brainstorming time as well.

Thankfully things with my current writing project have been going much better since my last blog post. Giving myself permission to start from scratch, to toss aside the things I was clinging to and brainstorm freely, all that has been tremendously helpful in finding my enthusiasm for the project. MANY thanks to all of you who commented on my website ur-blog, or on the LJ/Facebook/Goodreads/etc feeds. The support and the advice were both very welcome.

My plan of attack for dealing with the balky story was to follow the excellent advice from several folks who advised trying to focus on what the core of the book was to me. So I started with the several scenes that I really was aching to write, and figure out what they had in common, and made a list of all the things that were most important to me about the story (it wasn’t the things I expected!). Then I looked at the one must-write scene in my list that came earliest chronologically, and asked myself, “well, why shouldn’t the book just start there?”

It was one of those moments where I could practically hear the lightbulb going on over my own head. Yes, the book probably SHOULD start there. All that other stuff I’ve been working on and outlining, it is really all just backstory that leads to this one moment, when these two characters meet and start changing one another’s lives. So duh, ditch the backstory and start with the actual story.

I’m still holding off writing, probably until after holiday travel and activity subsides. I’ve spent hours scribbling down notes in my project notebook (using a purple pen somehow make this so much more fun!) and listening to inspirational music (mostly Dead Can Dance/Lisa Gerrard and Irfan/Azam Ali). I feel excited again, which is the best thing I could have hoped for. The story still may turn balky again when I set fingers to keyboard on Chapter 1, but at least think I am getting closer.

To quote a favorite movie in our household: Never Give Up! Never Surrender!

Peace and joy to all of you! I’ll be back next week with my highlights of 2010 and my hopes for 2011. I’m already enjoying thinking about the new year and new plans!

(It was too cloudy here to see the lunar eclipse earlier this week, but check out this picture of the eclipse + aurora by Francis Anderson! Found via Discover Blogs)

Writing has been difficult for me lately. And when the writing isn’t going well, it tends to cast a pall over the rest of my life. I feel grouchy and sad and I’m probably not very good company. I debated whether or not to even post this, because I have a horror of being whiny, and because I generally try to keep my blog focused on the positive.

But then I remembered how much I value hearing other authors talk about their own tough times, and how it helps to know that other people are forging through these slogs. Plus, if I *do* make it out of this current swamp of self-doubt with a real draft I’m proud of, I’d like to be able to look back and remember what it took to get there. So.

I have this story I really want to write. I’ve been working with the world it’s set in for over ten years, on-and-off. I think I’ve finally found the right characters and plot. I know the themes and emotions I want to explore. I have a dozen key scenes I’m aching to write.

And yet I’ve spent the last two months writing and abandoning first chapters. Stretching and twisting and shredding outlines. Taking a chapter and ripping out two thirds of it and trying to stitch it back together. Some good has come out of it: I’ve discovered new secrets about the world. I know my main character a lot better.

But it still feels so… clumsy and not-right. So this morning I moved my entire working document into my “Cuts” folder. And now I have a blank document staring open at me. Word Count: 0. Again.

I am afraid. I am afraid I am not talented enough, skilled enough to write this story. I worry that something is fatally flawed in my concept, and that is why I can’t seem to make it work. I worry that maybe I’m just being lazy, that I should push harder, just get *something* down and keep going, even when it feels wrong.

You’d think I’d be happier just giving up, working on something else. But no. It works for a while, but eventually I realize I’m more unhappy not-working on the book than I am struggling with it. Because this story is still inside me, trying to get out. And I still love it.

It may be that I never finish this book. Maybe next time I give up, I won’t miss it enough to come back. All I know is that for now, I have to keep trying.

But I’m definitely going to need more tea. And possibly some cookies.

Have any of you all had similar experiences? And how did they turn out? Stories with happy endings welcome!

(Also, I should note that this book isn’t under contract, thank goodness. I made a choice after my last contracted book NOT to attempt to sell on synopsis for the very reason that it makes these kinds of stresses a million times worse — for me, at least!)