GETTING UNSTUCK
Got to the midpoint of your story and finding yourself in a hole? Margaret James offers strategies for writing your way through the ‘soggy middle’
Those brilliant ideas for stories that mysteriously bubble up from somewhere deep in the subconscious to wake an author in the middle of the night, and get them groping for the notebook or phone they always keep handy on the bedside table – we’ve all been there, haven’t we? Or many of us, anyway?
As for getting these random inspirations down in some sort of intelligible format at three o’clock in the morning: that’s more of a challenge, isn’t it? At least it is for me.
But let’s suppose an author actually manages to jot down the essence of one of those brilliant ideas, dozes off again, then wakes up in the morning full of enthusiasm, energy and determination to write that bestseller.
At first, everything goes well. The first thirty or forty thousand words flow like lava erupting from the crater of a volcano, blazing and unstoppable.