Failed Chapters

I missed posting an excerpt from Hollowed Memories last week, but I’m sure nobody noticed. One reason was that I’ve been very busy, handling undergraduate researchers at the university. However, the big thing was that I had been having an awful lot of trouble with my writing.

I don’t mean I was having trouble writing chapter 3. That’s been composed and edited for months. However, chapter 8 has really been giving me trouble. I wrote a version of it, then decided it did not work. So I started composing another chapter, with a significantly different plot, but that seemed to be coming out even worse. This chapter was supposed to mark the end of one of the book’s major divisions, but I couldn’t come up with a plot that wrapped things up adequately before a major shift in focus.

Eventually, I just needed to take a break from the story. I think I know what I’m going to do with the storyline now, plucking bits from each of the drafts I’ve written. However, I still needed time away from the story to catch my breath, so I took a week off. (I also too some time to do some writing in my professional capacity as a physicist.)