Story alienation

A few days ago, I had a breakthrough with my latest novel, currently called A Chance Damnation.  I had been plugging along with more or less success, turning the occasional nice phrase, moving the plot along, etc.

Then, suddenly, I had no connection to my characters.  I couldn’t feel them, couldn’t imagine what they were doing.  I couldn’t hear their voices in my head.  Every line was pulling teeth.

But when I went back and read those days, I found the writing was, if not pretty, compelling.

Today, I wrote almost 10K.  It took a while, but it all came out.  Again, not as pretty as the earlier stuff, but I found out things I had no idea were in my brain…and yet had set up in previous sections.

What happened?  I have no idea.  Usually, when this kind of thing happens, I throw my hands up in the air and cry “Yield!  Uncle!”  Since I started doing NaNoWriMos, I’ve cut back on that kind of thing, but this one was pretty severe (admittedly, they all feel pretty severe).

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