I’m in the midst of writing another book. I started last Monday and I expect to be finished in 4 weeks. That’s nothing new. However, there is something that I’ve noticed as I’m writing, that there will be a point, hopefully toward the beginning of the book, where everything will just click and from that point on, the whole story just comes together. Today was that day. Here’s what happened.This is a normal thing for me, although I never know exactly when it will happen. The first couple of days are always a struggle, even though I never miss a writing goal, but I do have to push myself, right off the bat, until I can get into the flow of things.

At best, it happens the first day. The worst I remember, it took 2 weeks. This time was on day 5, which is hardly the best but hardly the worst I could hope for. I’m not in control of it and I don’t really get why it happens. Every book is fully plotted. I don’t go off-script. I guess part of it is the lack of writing that always comes before. I took off nearly 2 weeks, editing and reading other books before I could dive into this one and that might explain some things.

However, today, I knew that my main character was going to get into a bar fight. I knew that a giant spaceship was going to show up in the skies overhead. Those two events were not at all connected. The MC was just blowing off steam getting drunk and the ship was setting up events down the line.

Then, I had the brilliant idea of a call-back to another book, about a fight that the MC had gotten involved in, where he was afraid of a particularly large and deadly alien critter and I figured what better to have happen that for one of those creatures to walk into the bar and start making trouble. There’s the impetus for the fight, it’s no longer a random act and suddenly… click.

From there, everything just fell into place. It went from a bar fight on a distant planet inside of a pressurized dome to blowing the dome, to having an exciting chase across the surface, to getting into his ship and making a run for it with a dozen bigger, stronger and faster ships in pursuit, to seeing interstellar cruisers in the sky above moving to intercept and knowing that there was no way out of this, to… the gigantic spaceship arriving and saving the day. It went from a relatively minor scene in one chapter to a fully realized and fun chase sequence. Now, all of the consequences down the line, they all tie back to the main character who can feel responsible when things start to go wrong. All of it happened because of the click.

Now, I know the next three weeks will be easier. The book went from a series of events, compelling in their own right, to a cohesive narrative that I can easily follow. I know it’s hard to explain how to do things because everyone has their own path and what works for me might not work for you and vice versa. I just don’t want people to be afraid to just dive down the rabbit hole and find your own moment of clarity where everything just comes together. I put down close to 30,000 words this week and that’s a fair start to the book. This makes 4 for the year under my belt. I want to crank out at least 3 more. I don’t think that will be a problem.