As I mentioned in my end of 2022 wrap up, I'm currently working on A Witch and Her Familiar, the second novel in the Vanessa Kinley, Witch PI Series (Celia Roman).

This novel is the one I was writing when burnout sent my entire life skidding to an abrupt halt in late 2021. While recovering during the first six months of 2022, I picked Witch/Familiar up several times, trying to finish it. Each time, the story remained stubbornly blank in my mind. I couldn't figure out where to go, even though I knew what needed to happen.

I kept trying, because I'm just stubborn like that, but it felt like walking through cold molasses. By the end of October 2022, the story stood at roughly 18,000 words in length, or roughly 30% complete, in part because of something I tried in mid-October (I'll get to that in a minute). Then my brain went blank again and I lost a month and a half trying to get back on track.

Finally in December, something snapped back into place in my mind and I was able to really write again. It took a lot to get to that point of alignment; I'm not going to go over all that here (and maybe not ever). This post is about something else entirely: what happens when the story gets stuck during the normal writing process, and what I did to overcome that stuckness.

This contains some spoilers, so if you're a fan of the series, you may want to wait until Witch/Familiar releases to read it. Mostly this post is for me, though for other writers and readers, it's illustrative of the writing process and why it sometimes takes a long, long time to finish a story, even one as short as I project Witch/Familiar to be.

The Out of Control Magic Scene

When I was developing Witch/Familiar in late 2021, I knew one of the major subplots would be about Nessa, the main character, gaining control of her magic. At the end of Between a Witch and a Hard Place (Book 1), Nessa lost control in a way that ended up killing someone and hurting others. Nessa hated the loss of control; it's completely outside her nature. She thinks of herself as a protector and a force for good, not as a destructive person.

So one of the series' overarching subplots focuses on her mastery of her magic.

To illustrate how powerful her magic is and how much effort magic is to wield effectively, I knew there had to be a scene demonstrating her lack of control. I didn't, however, know what form that scene would take while I was developing the story. This was a sticking point: how could I best show Nessa's struggle and her real fear of harming someone again?

The solution turned out to be part of a scene where Auntie O is instructing Nessa in the use of the healing rune Nessa used at the end of Book 1 to heal herself. I'm not going to go into the exact details of the scene (that really would be a major spoiler). Suffice it to say that Nessa loses control in a huge way and both she and Auntie O are hurt (mildly) in the process.

Alpha Readers

After writing the scene, however, I had second thoughts: was this really the best way to show that loss of control?

I needed a second set of eyes. Unfortunately, my editor has had some personal/family issues over the past few months, so I couldn't ask him to read the scene and share his thoughts.

To get around that, I did something I almost never do: I asked members of the Celia Roman readers group to alpha read the first four chapters of Witch/Familiar. I specifically wanted them to look at that scene.

The feedback came in within a couple of weeks. Most readers thought the scene was a little weird, but otherwise fine. Relieved, I managed to hack out another 5100 words near the end of October, after which I got stuck again. Something else was wrong, but what? Was it the burnout thing, or was something wrong with the story itself?

Train vs. Water

Before I get into that answer and its solution, let me step back and explain something about the kind of writer I am. The following analogy comes from Becca Syme, a success coach who works specifically with writers. Her resources helped me dig myself out of burnout, and will hopefully help me stay out of it.

Anyway, last year I read all of Becca's Dear Writer books and listened to innumerable episodes of her QuitCast. Her work focuses on helping writers understand why they are the way they are and helps them align their personality and life situation with their writing process, so that they can maximize their success (however each writer defines that).

Different writers function in different ways. Some are "plotters" (aka outliners) and some are "pantsers" (discover writers), and some fall in between those two extremes. And so on. For every one hundred writers, there are at least one hundred ways to tackle any particular aspect of writing.

One analogy Becca uses is the Broken Train Tracks analogy, a "broken" spot in the manuscript where something has gone wrong and needs to be fixed. When a writer encounters broken train tracks (gets stuck in the manuscript), how do they handle it? Do they flow around it like water, ignoring the broken spot until they reach their destination? Or do they have to stop the train and fix the train tracks before they can move on?

It turns out that I'm a train: when something is broken in the manuscript that affects the rest of the story, I have to fix it before I can move on.

Now, I knew I was this kind of writer before encountering Becca's work, but she had such an apt way of explaining why I'm that way that I now default to her way of describing it. Even in my own mind, I think of that kind of stuckness as train tracks that I need to repair before my train can proceed.

Being train or water has nothing to do with whether or not one outlines; I start most stories with a rough outline and usually know about what needs to happen.

That doesn't mean I can't (or don't) get stuck, because I do. When my process is aligned, I can usually figure out what's wrong by laying the manuscript aside for a while and letting the problem simmer in the back of my mind while I'm working on another project. That's a point I'm trying to get back to, but again, that's part of the burnout recovery process and I'm not going to discuss that here.

The End of Book 1

I had hoped that the Out of Control Magic scene was the only broken spot in Witch/Familiar, and solving that problem would move me forward.

But as I already explained, getting the feedback of trusted readers only pushed me so far forward before I encountered another set of broken train tracks.

I set the manuscript aside and focused on other projects, until finally it dawned on me that I'd made a huge (or what felt like a huge) mistake at the end of Book 1, which ended with Dimitri and Nessa sitting down for a conversation.

At the time, that seemed like the appropriate place to end the book, on a nice hook that set up the beginning of Book 2 (Witch/Familiar).

But when I wrote the first scene for Witch/Familiar, I glossed over that conversation, which was important.

When I realized that, I brainstormed ways to fix the error that wouldn't involve rewriting Book 1. It turned out to need just a little tweaking, and while that tweaking wasn't the ideal solution, it was the one that would keep me from having to rewrite the ending of the first book and figure out how to get it out to readers.

More Broken Train Tracks

Was that the end of it? Oh hell, no. Of course it wasn't. It did, however, move the needle forward another 6,000 words, to 24,000, or roughly 40% done, which took me through most of December. At that point, my brain was screaming at me that there were still some problems I needed to fix before moving forward.

So I fell back on an old reliable: I printed out the entire manuscript and reread it from page one, red ink pen in hand.

And wow, did it take a lot of ink to discover the brokenness.

It turns out that the various subplots were not as strong as they should've been, specifically: the Fields investigation (Witch/Familiar's main plot); Nessa's relationship with Seth; and another minor hitch with Dimitri.

I'm positive that the weakness of these plot threads occurred as a direct result of self-doubt (a byproduct or possibly an underlying cause of my burnout) and the amount of time it's taken to get to this point in the story. I needed to step back and look at the entire story to date to see the flaws and weaknesses, which rereading helps me do. I've done this several times since committing the first word of Witch/Familiar to paper. This time, though, I had the benefit of a healthier, non-burned-out mind, and that went a long way toward helping me spot the problems.

Moving Forward

Now that I've used half a cup of red ink laying out problem areas, I can fix those and move forward. I feel much more positive about Witch/Familiar now than I did in November 2021 when I first started writing it. Being out of burnout helps tremendously, but so does being in a place where I'm not stressing over getting the story finished so that I can publish it.

I'm not promising to have A Witch and Her Familiar done anytime soon, but I am working on it and it's most definitely one of the books I want to publish this year.

If you're wondering, the estimated finished word count for Witch/Familiar is 60,000, or roughly five to seven thousand words longer than Between a Witch and a Hard Place. I don't know why, but for some reason, the Celia Roman books land on the shorter side of things. Possibly the emphasis on dialogue and action? I don't know. Will Witch/Familiar reach that length? Again, I don't know, but it feels like I'm at roughly the middle point of the story right now, so maybe?

At any rate, as with most of my series, the individual books are so interconnected that it's better to read them from Book 1 forward. Nessa's series is particularly tightly woven; the books are stacked closely together chronologically, and the various subplots are mostly developed over all four books. That's why it's critical for me to make sure the various plot threads are where they need to be before publishing each instalment.

It's also why I tend to spend so much time in development both before, during, and after writing each manuscript. Again, I don't think I would've encountered so many problems with so many plot threads if I hadn't been in such a bad place.

Will it be smooth sailing from here to the end? I don't think so. Experience has taught me differently. But I have better tools to deal with those problems, and my mindset and process alignment are both in better places than they were a year ago. So we'll see what's what as the story progresses. Meanwhile, I'm back in a place where I enjoy the process of writing, which should help me move forward in a positive way with all of my writing projects.