I'd been stuck on writing the last couple of days. I managed a little, but wasn't hitting my word goals, and what was really frustrating, I'd hit a wall. Literally, I had my heroine knocking on a door, her sidekicks behind her, and as an author… I had no idea what was behind that wall. This is the peril of pantsing. You will, on occasion, not be able to see any further ahead in the story than your own nose.
After beating my head on it for 36 hours, during which I went through recovery, errands, and a lot of social network distraction stuff, I finally figured it out. It took the catalyst of my First Reader playing evil muse to do it. As I told him while we were walking the dog and talking this all through, I could do it on my own, but it would take me a lot longer than being able to bounce ideas off him, and spark ideas coming back from him.
After my post the other day on MGC and here, about writing and having a trusted collaborator, I realize I'm very, very lucky to have him. Whether my characters think so, on the other hand!
So I now have, in my story, two teenagers tied up and lying on cold concrete in the back of an abandoned store. They're in Kentucky, although they don't know that, and the two men they interrupted with their knock on the door were up to no good. I haven't decided quite what they were doing. We'd initially discussed marijuana growers, and I'd dismissed that idea because this is a Young Adult novel. But it occurred to me that making moonshine might not seem like a major transgression to the modern youth, and that when I look at news out of the area, meth labs are the big bad.
What say you? Our villains aren't going to be a big part of the story, the teens have the ability to escape, and they are about to meet a little old lady who is anything but sweet and helpless. Right now I'm off to do some reading and research on Cherokee mythology, which may give you an idea of what is coming.
If you're curious, I'm working on the sequel to this:
