I’ve never been a blogger, nor have I ever really followed anyone else’s blog. Who has time... With all the social media sites independent writers are supposed to monitor on a daily basis? I’m a writer, not a blogger...

But, here I am.

Writing is by its nature, a solitary endeavor. One envisions a lone figure, hunched over and furiously tapping out the beginning of the bestseller, on a lamp lit keyboard. Right? Like the jean clad picture of Grace Metalious on the back cover of Peyton Place. Maybe.
I usually spend a good deal of time talking to experts and researching facts for my upcoming projects. So it’s not like I lack human contact. But sometimes I do find myself talking, late at night to my ceiling fan. Running lines of dialogue until they make sense enough to write them down, tossing back and forth from myself to myself a new plot line or a new twist. (please tell me other writers do the same and I am not a nutter) Or as mentioned above, clicking furiously on my keyboard, to get a particularly good thought down before it drifts away. So, why my blogging?

Perhaps it’s just a new method of procrastination, or a way to clear my mind and solve my present conundrum. Let me explain. I really dislike serial writing. When choosing a book to read and review I try to stay clear of those that indicate it’s the first in a series, or a serial. And yet I find myself trying to complete the third book in a series. Now granted all three books are stand alone. Each story resolves the dilemmas of the characters involved and each new book starts with a new mystery, but how do you divorced yourself from characters it has taken you over 1000 pages to develop? It’s somehow like saying goodbye for the last time to an old friend. And you want to do it just right.
Recently I read two different books, in completely different genres, both having endings that perhaps I would not have written myself, (given my pension for neat and tidy endings) but were nonetheless perfect. Alice Close Your Eyes by Averil Dean and Tankbread by Paul Mannering. Oh, what I would give for such an ending.

I never really understood writer’s block, what that meant exactly... Now I do.

I have paced and paced, and plotted and re-plotted. I have sought out the opinions of my Writers Guild critique group, friends and family. I have written and I have edited and still have not found the perfect way to put Mac & CiCi McConnell on the shelf for good. I’m beginning to see why Martin can’t seem to finish the Game of Thrones.

Well, I suppose it’s time to stop immersing myself in Netflix’s endless offerings of two star horror films and get on with it.

Seriously...