Teaching My Muse New Tricks
Now that Fey Touched is out and in the wild, I’ve been turning my attention to the sequel, Grave Touched. Except that my muse has been vehemently resisting doing any kind of writing. Sure, she’s been pinging me with all kinds of ideas for other books (I think we’re up to five or six now) but not Grave Touched. It’s like she’s got a mental block, or maybe I do. Backing up a bit. When I first started writing Fey Touched, I didn’t really have an outline. I had a bunch of ideas for storylines and what I wanted to accomplish, but nothing concrete. I’ve had varied success with actual outlining, but I seem to write my best work without an outline (“pantsing” in writer-speak – writing by the seat of your pants) and I used that method for the first 120k of Fey Touched. It wasn’t until the end that I actually outlined anything. Also, I’ve been complimented on my ability to weave the storylines together. And it’s weird, because that part wasn’t even conscious. It just happened. I swear, I did nothing but go on pure instinct (and quite possibly pure panic as I was coming up on my deadline and had to rewrite the second half in two weeks.) So, naturally, I wanted to go with what worked, but I’m having issues.