In Search of My Brain

Maybe it's just that I'm tired.

I am tired. I haven't slept well in almost a year. For the last six months I've only slept about six hours a night maximum, with numerous gettings-up and wanderings around the house along the way. And I have ceased to be able to take meaningful naps. So I'm really, really beat.

But in spite of that, during the later part of February, March and April, I experienced the most heightened state of creativity that I've ever known. And then, the second week of May, it stopped.

I was about 400 pages into the fourth Caitlin Ross book, The Strayaway Child. For this book, I had a wonderful set up and not real plot. So I invented one. 400 pages into the book, I realized the plot didn't make any sense, so I axed about 200 pages and came up with a new plot. This plot makes sense, but it fails to excite me. I can't find the emotional resonance, the hook that keeps me writing, wanting to find out how it all turns out just like any reader. I wrote about 100 pages, realized I was stalling and nothing I had written advanced the plot and axed that, too. I started again. I wrote two chapters, realized my characters were not acting right, and axed them. Now I'm stuck 2/3 of the way through chapter 13 and I can't find it in me to go on. I know what happens. I just can't get there.

I hope it's just that I'm tired and if I take some time off, it'll come back to me. Because otherwise I'm stuck with the idea that I've set up a book that I just don't give a shit about.