I had the dubious honor of meeting Linda Greenlaw, author of THE LOBSTER CHRONICLES and THE HUNGRY OCEAN at the Water Street Bookstore the other evening. She was there to read and sign copies of SLIPKNOT, her first forage into the mystery genre.
I've heard Linda present before and have always been impressed by her honesty about being a writer. She alluded to the fact that writing a mystery novel and having to make everything up from scratch rather than recounting what she had already experienced, was a very different task. Afterwards, we had a brief conversation about just how difficult the writing life can be.
There are moments when the words flow, but there are just as many moments when panic sets in because they don't. Writers are notoriously pressed for time and to not be able to produce pages on demand, is bad. Sometimes really bad.
Writers use different techniques to work around this. I usually work on more than one novel at a time, so if I get a little stuck on one, I switch to the other. They are usually very different in scope which helps. If that doesn't work, I just blog...