Summer is my favorite season of the year; I love the warm nights glittering with stars above and fireflies below and the promise of adventure. However, I will admit, it is not the best time of the year for me as a writer. With the coming of June and the onset of summer I have been much busier than winter and spring. When the weather is sunny and beautiful outside, the outdoors beckons. Between impulsive mini vacations and working in my garden, writing has taken a backseat on days when a less seductive season might not have tempted me away from the computer.

However, I can’t fully blame the weather. I will admit, I have been slumping in my writing for other reasons as well. My confidence has been a bit down lately as I am writing really tight, intense action/world building type of scenes almost every chapter. The decisions made in these scenes will ultimately effect the rest of the novel/trilogy. Thus, I am over-analyzing them to death.

This is one deleterious effect of being a “pantser” style author–since you don’t have a definite plan down to the last detail, sometimes you get held up because you come up to something big you haven’t worked out yet. This is definitely what is happening to me. I know all of the characters’ ultimate “big” moves they are working towards right now. However, in the mean time, they need to make decently big, exciting moves to get there. I can’t jump to the conclusion (even though I have the ending of INDUCTANCE planned out and it will be the perfect exciting finish and set up to the final installment).

My challenge now is to think about the present–in the sense of my book–I have been caught up in doubts about the quality of the story right now, but I need to put those aside and trust in my skill as a storyteller. Words to the page is the main thing, and getting words to the page means being confident in yourself. I need to get over this summer slump, trust myself and write. I can feel myself getting more confident already… 🙂