Insomniac Nightmares

Sometimes, no matter how much you like a story or a character or a situation, there comes a point where you have to throw your hands up and say “Call it. Time of death.”

“Riptide” appears to have suffered such a death. With all the health problems and other upheavals, attempting to write hasn’t been easy… attempting to work on that story in particular has been all but impossible. When I open the document and stare at it, trying to remember what I was doing and attempting to reconnect with our protagonist in an attempt to see what she’ll do next, I get the flat hum of dead air, the long, low beep of a flatlined monitor.

So, despite being in the middle, I have to state that the patient has died. It is an unfortunate truth of writing that sometimes that happens. It is sad, it is frustrating, and frequently leads into a blame game, pointing fingers at everything and everyone that might have led to the death. But sometimes it just happens. They slip away. At least, to me.

The bright side, of course, is that because writing is an inherently magical act, sometimes that death isn’t permanent. Sometimes those stories will get dragged back to the temple where some brave soul donates for a resurrection. They may return, Gandalf the White style, more powerful and radiant than they were before their deaths; they may return relatively unchanged, popping their feet up on the table, cracking a beer and asking “What’s up?” Sometimes they come crawling back as shambling monstrosities, abominations that are mockeries of their former selves… but at least for a horror writer, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Thankfully, while work has slowed significantly on Believe Me, it hasn’t died completely. So that’s one good thing, I suppose. There’s also a different bit of serialized fiction, “Three Blue Hearts” that seems to actually want to crawl onto the page, and that should start cropping up come Wednesday. Keep an eye out for that.

What about my fellow creatives out there? Has there been a project that you were working happily on but that just died in its tracks and refused to allow life-giving efforts? What caused it, and how did you deal with it? Let us know down below!