It’s not often I get stuck on what to write. I sometimes get stuck on how to write it well, but the actual what isn’t usually a problem. However, as you may have guessed, it’s a problem at the moment. But there may be a couple valid reasons for this.

I just had eye surgery. Nothing major, just cataract surgery in both eyes. Yup, that procedure old people often have done so they don’t end up driving off the road at night. I guess I am now officially part of that group. As I’ve stated on several occasions, I live in a very secluded area. At night it gets dark, very dark. Once you get out of town, which is really just a couple blocks itself, there are no lights at all. No street lights, very few businesses with lights, nada. Darkness. And I love it. I would rather not live in an area where there are lighted ribbons of roads or highways leading me to brightly lit towns and cities. I can actually see the Milky Way while standing on my deck.

The roads around me are very few and quite winding. They bend around mountains, follow twisting rivers, and very rarely run straight. Couple the roads, and yes, I love them too, with the darkness and you have what can amount to a dangerous situation. Oncoming headlights, winding along the road in the near-complete darkness, have been starting to resemble the exploding death stars in Star Wars. Instead of two car headlights coming at me it’s been more like twin supernovas doing whatever it is supernovas do. So, it was time to do something about it, and I did. But it’s been a couple weeks of not quite having my regular vision back, and I think it’s been throwing me off my game.

Also, as I stated in my last post, we have been having some work done at the house. And to say it’s been stressful would be a huge understatement. It’s dirty, our stuff is all over the place, and our normal routines are completely shot to hell. I know what I’m about to write may seem like a “well, duh” sort of thing, but really, it just occurred to me a few days ago. There’s no escape. It’s 24/7. If there is upheaval going on at work, you can leave to go home and not have to deal with it again until the following day. There’s no escaping this. We eat with it, sleep with it, try to write with it, live our waking moments around it. It doesn’t go away. Yes, we can leave the house, but when we return…. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, though. If we can get a couple items delivered to us intact, and that has not been the case yet, we will be finished. If you are religious, send a prayer our way. We could certainly use it.

So, back to where I started, what to write. I have a book that’s been written for awhile. No, it is not in final draft stage; it has been stalled in whatever stage it’s in for a few years. The issue is that it is different from what I usually write. I usually write mystery/thriller/suspense, and while this book probably falls into that broad triple category, it’s different in the fact that my protagonist is different. She is a fifteen-year-old girl. I have written female characters before, in fact one of my favorite characters to write is a very brash young woman named Nikki. She’s fun to write. Until she says it, I really have no idea what’s going to come out of her mouth. While that may sound like bull, I swear it’s true. This poor woman has had a lot go wrong in her life, but she keeps coming out swinging, always with some smart-ass dialogue to accompany her. I could write Nikki for days.

My current problem is with this new character, let’s call her Kristen, because currently anyway, that’s her name. It isn’t that I don’t know what she’ll say, I’ve already written it. I just wonder if it sounds as though a very bright fifteen-year-old girl would say it in the manner she does. Basically, is Kristen believable? Would she be believable to another fifteen-year-old girl? I used to be a teacher. Over the years I taught kids who were about thirteen, and those who were about sixteen to seventeen. I dropped Kristen right between them because I thought I would just split the difference. I mean, after almost twenty-five years I should know what these kids sound like, right? I think so, but I’m not sure.

When writing this book I read several popular YA novels (Young Adult) to ensure I wasn’t wandering too far off the teenage trail. But I discovered something while reading. These books tended to do a lot more telling rather than showing. You’ve probably heard “show, don’t tell” when it comes to writing. Instead of writing and TELLING the reader, “Mr Baddy was a truly evil man” it’s a better read to SHOW this with something like, “Mr Baddy stepped off the sidewalk and kicked the small puppy into traffic.” Whoa! No doubts there. This guy is truly evil to the core and you don’t need anyone to have to TELL you. You’ve just SEEN it.

While I am sure I sometimes fail at this, I try to show, show, show rather than tell. But with Kristen, I wrote her doing more telling than I normally would do. And it makes me uncomfortable. I have finally, at my wife’s suggestion, asked the young daughter of a friend of ours if she would be a beta reader for me and give me her feedback. While I truly trust her opinion I think I may need to round up a couple more young readers. Damn. Kristen has been sitting on my laptop in various forms for too long. It’s time I got my butt in gear, stopped overanalyzing what may or may not happen, and just move forward.

In one of my all-time favorite movies a character is talking to his partner and tells her a relationship is like a shark, in order to stay alive it has to keep moving forward. And what I think we have here is a dead shark.

Time to move forward. No dead sharks.