on Anne R Allen:

The lights are red.

All signs are Stop Signs.

That stack of pages you thought was going to be a book? You know, with characters, a setting, maybe even a plot? Somehow, it vanished in a wasteland of false starts, dead ends and dead darlings.

Why? What happened?

You’re the author — but right now you’re so bummed out and so frustrated, you’re the last to know where you went wrong. You’ve worked so hard and for so long you’ve lost all perspective.

Still, you do know you’re nowhere near the stage where even the savviest crit group or genius editor can bail you out.

How about you fix grammar, cut adverbs, and/or replace weak words with stronger words? Won’t that gloss your book to a high polish?

Nope. Forget it. Won’t help. Or at least, not yet.

You’re stranded in the wasteland of a mess you yourself created with, you’re convinced, no way out.