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).