I'd hit a spot in my novel that brought me to a screeching halt. My heroine's abusive ex-fiance had abducted her. I knew how I wanted things to end, but the in-between police procedural stuff? Man, it was like writing about brain surgery when you can't stand the sight of blood.
For a few days I contemplated skipping that part and writing from the hospital scene to the end of the novel. I stood in front of the mirror, slapping on wrinkle cream with a trowel and arguing with myself. "Don't make it difficult," I grumbled to Self. "Just ignore that part and write the remainder of the story."
"I can't do that!" Self told me, picking up a jar of moisturizer. "You know how I can't leave a chapter until I've rewritten it six or seven times. How...how am I just going to ignore a complete chapter?" Self dabbed moisturizer on the wrinkled road map of my face.
"Be different, Self. For once in your life, let go and move on." I waved my mascara wand for emphasis.
"Oh, yeah," Self smirked, puckering up for a layer of Fuchsia Floozy lipstick. "This from a woman who couldn't let go of the pain of her divorce for ten years."
I smacked my lips and blotted them. "Okay...okay...it was just a thought. So what if I was trying to take the easy way out?" I ran a comb through my hair and spritzed on hair spray. "I'll do it. I'll face that green laptop and plow my way through, word by agonizing word."
Self held two pairs of earrings up to my ears and turned side to side for effect. Silver heart earrings were chosen over purple dangly ones. "So what if the first writing of it is lacking?"
"Lacking?" My fingers stilled at my ears. "What do you mean lacking?"
Self grinned. She knew she'd plucked my last ego nerve--the huzzy.
I wrote that chapter in two hours. My fingertips tingled. Calvin made me cuppachinos. The cat sat by my arm and purred a soothing song. Sometimes you just have to put on your "big girl writing pants" and plough through it.
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