On Tuesday, I busted out 3k words for the Monsters of Pittsburgh finale.  When I finished, I wrote my Insecure Writers Support Group post, and was ready to spend all day Wednesday head deep in drafting.

I woke up, opened Scrivener, and… immediately started scrolling shutterstock.com. Because, you see, my friend bought X amount of images, but didn’t use all them, so she said I should grab images for covers.

So on the one hand,  I mocked up eight covers yesterday. Which is awesome, don’t get me wrong. I have a game plan for the second series of covers, and they’ve gone over really, really well.

But once again, nothing is getting written.  And I think I know why. There’s a rather painful plot point coming. Its one that I didn’t plan, but I can see why it has to happen.

Strangely, when I plan to torture my characters (or readers), I take great glee in writing that scene.

When I realize that something bad needs to happen because it makes narrative sense and the story needs it… not so much.

On top of that, the opening of this story is action heavy. Yes, yes, yes, I HAVE railed against the Batman Cold Open. But my issues aren’t opening with an action sequence. My issues are opening a NEW story with an action sequence.  Nobody knows or cares about your brand new main character, who you obviously aren’t going to kill.  And if you do kill off the character in the opening action sequence, you have just wasted my time and empathy.

On the other hand, this is story seven in Monsters of Pittsburgh and story fourteen in the overall series.  I think I can risk a fight to start the story.

Now that I know my issue, it’s time to buckle down and get this written. I want to start releasing Monsters of Pittsburgh in August. That sounds like forever away, but it isn’t. The sooner I can get this written, the sooner I can start polishing up the whole series.

So, off I go. Time to inflict some damage.