I know what I want to say, I just can’t find the words to say it. Do you ever feel that way?

The 25,000 word mark or thereabouts is where I tend to get stuck.

The beginning is done, the story is more or less set, and the dreaded middle arrives. I should be pumped to have gotten this far, now I just have to pull the story along. But instead of writing, I’m staring at a blank page searching for the words, the scenes, the characters to come to life, the action to keep me interested.

There’s nothing.

I think I need to throw in an explosion, a murder, or a red herring of some sort to move the story along. Every idea that pops to mind seems ridiculous.

This is the moment where all self doubt seems to cloud my judgement. There’s no such thing as perfect, good enough is well, good enough. I can always fix it up in a later draft. I just need to keep going and that means writing, even if it’s shit. Didn’t Hemingway say, you gotta write shitty first drafts first?

I’m not sure shitty is the way to go but if it will take the pressure off, why not? You can always omit the crap once it’s on the page, at least there’ll be something to work with.

The only option is to keep going.

Originally, I had given myself a deadline to finish the first draft of my next novel, a sequel to Lethal Disposal, by the end of July.

That leaves me with 21 days.

Hmm, if that’s not pressure, I don’t know what is. I’d have to average about 2500 words per day to get that done and while it’s certainly achievable, when you have to consider a day job, a toddler, a husband, a house to take care of, study, and sleep. The available writing hours definitely start dwindling away.

I don’t want to change the deadline because if I put too far in the future I might just get a little lazy. But I don’t want to put too much pressure on myself as that might cause the dreaded writer’s block.

I’m going to have an ‘A’ goal and a ‘B’ goal.

My ‘A’ goal is to finish the draft by the end of July and my ‘B’ goal is to shoot for mid August. Regardless, the first draft will be done.

So what am I still doing here? Time to get back to that novel!

How’s your writing going? Where do you get particularly stuck when writing your novel?