on Fiction University:

Not everything you write needs to be published—or even publishable.

A few years after I published my third novel (Darkfall), I fell into a dark time with my writing. I was drafting a novel that did not want to work the way I wanted it to, and I dreaded sitting down at the keyboard every day. Writing was no longer fun.

With sad relief, I set the manuscript aside and worked on a non-fiction project I’d been wanting to do (my very first writing book, Plotting Your Novel: Ideas and Structure). I fully intended to return to fiction afterward, expecting my dread of the novel to have passed by then.

It hadn’t.

I’ll be honest—it was terrifying.

Every time I tried to write, all the old stresses and fears came back and I avoided the keyboard.

I’d written my entire life, and I couldn’t imagine not crafting another novel again. It wasn’t that I couldn’t write, I just didn’t want to write.

I’d lost my mojo.

I’ll spare you all the soul-searching and frustrations I went through during that time, and skip right to the part that helped me get over it.

Continue reading HERE