Have you ever been writing a story and the further along you get the more it doesn’t feel right? That happened to me recently. I was writing this horror novel and I got it all the way to the end. After a sigh of thanksgivng for putting another one to rest. I set it aside. A few days later I re-read through it. This is a common practice for me and maybe some of you. Anyway, as I get to the end of it, I think to myself. “there’s something missing”, so I set it aside to wait for lightening to strike. I’m at a friends house when it strikes. I jump out of bed at four a.m. and in a fever pitch I write it out. And when I say write, I don’t mean tapping away quickly on my laptop, with pen and paper in hand, I write.

So now it’s complete a second time. The manuscript is ready for me to go to the next step. I set it aside again and begin planning for it’s next phase. Somewhere, someplace in the middle of my next step preperations, I begin to get a nagging feeling. I’m not sure. Something about the story is bothering me. Here is where belonging to writing group comes in handy. There are many journey’s in life where you go it alone. Fortunately for me and you writing is not one of them. When you open yourself up to others who are like minded as you, you give yourself a great gift.

So I ask a question of one of my writing groups about my story. And I get answers. Oh boy do I get answers. Some say its alright, some say it’s not. I get one answer from one of the groups adminastrator’s and its a no go. The answer hits me on the head. It’s dircet and gives a reason. The reason is the nag that had been nagging me about my story. Now my story has crapped the bed. I knew this was a problem even as I wrote out the first time, but refused to see it. I thanked my group and was thankful for their many responses, and I realized that I had always known the answer. I sit the story aside now as I rethink, how can I elliminate this story problem but keep the heat and intensity that it once held? As I write I am still in the thought process of it and I know the answer will come. This is too good a story to let go. It’s not the time that it took me to write it that matters, I don’t care. I don’t want to lose the story. So what do you do when a story craps the bed? You set it aside and wait for inspiration. It will come. It alwasy does.