No thought is more conflicting than, “Do I really have to kill off this character, too?”

Except the honest answer: “Yes.”

It’s Friday. I have coffee. I have 25,000 words (plus a few hundred more). And I still have no plan for anything that comes between here and the end of this book, other than one mysterious murder, a few plot twists and a few potential cliffhangers to launch us straight into Book 3.

Oh yes. I’m THAT kind of writer.

Halfway through my 50,000-word journey, and therefore halfway through November, I have yet to establish some form of order and/or dictatorship over my characters. They went along with me as I wrote Book 1, but they’re a bit more bold in their hopes and desires for the future of their story as I write Book 2. I have no idea what they’re planning. I think I’m okay with that.

I think.

Though my current project lacks a solid plan or physical outline, the themes and motifs are set and somehow keep weaving themselves into random conversations between characters. Tensions are built up, broken and built up again. Something is most definitely always on fire, metaphorically or otherwise. I have yet to figure out what the wolf-dog hybrid means, but I’ve fallen in love with him (and I refuse to kill him off, and I’m sticking to that.

I’m a bit mortified that I’m over halfway to 50,000 and basically “nothing” has happened in the story yet. A group of MCs is supposed to leave to go on this epic journey to find the two characters that were kidnapped in the last book, but they haven’t left yet. There needs to be more buildup before they can leave (and literally as I typed that sentence I came up with how I want this book to end, BRAINS ARE WEIRD ORGANS).

First there’s the issue of family among characters who aren’t supposed to “have” any – one character whose only immediate family member is one of the kidnapped characters, two characters who just figured out who their parents are and one character whose daughter is the other of the two characters who were kidnapped. No one knows how to love or trust each other, which brings us to plot problem number two.

At the end of Book 1, a whole mass of characters flat-out betrayed the MCs, and in the beginning of Book 2, one of those characters comes back “to the scene of the crime,” you could say. Due to some serious identity theft issues in Book 1 (it’s not what you’re thinking), basically no one can know for sure if who they’re talking to at any given second is actually the person they think they are. Yet secrets are spilling out left and right. Which, of course, leads to point three.

Someone has to die. And it’s not going to be pretty. Someone of course has to get wrongfully framed for that murder, because what would a twisted not-really-a-utopian society be without the dark kind of drama you honest to goodness hope never happens IRL?

I’m pretty much rambling on about a story you’ve never read, and don’t understand, and I’m either driving you insane because you hate hearing vague summaries of unpublished novels or making you bang your head against your keyboard because you wish this were a real thing but it’s NOT.

Shut up, Meg. Just go write your stupid book.

Love&hugs, Meg<3