Prevarication and procrastination are easy vices to fall into. I have been doing both on two keep works in Progress. Part Three of the Demise series, An Agent’s Prize and Part Two of The Observers Series, Intervention. In both cases the stories were progressing well and then I came unstuck. The first I had an idea for a big scene and was driving the story to get to the big scene, but it was not flowing. In the second, I have over-complicated the story line trying to bring too many different elements into the story. In both cases I have been fiddling with the odd line and writing no more chapters. I know what I have to do I just don’t want to do it. Pages of words will have to go, and then I have to revise the remainder to get the stories to make sense. Only then can I progress the manuscripts, and finish the tales.

Of course knowing what I have to do and actually doing it, are two very different things. There are some nice scenes that I have already created but will have to go. The whole links and connections in the stories will have to be re-done. Then the unneeded material will have to be deleted. That is the worst bit. It will be like throwing away a digit, not a whole leg or arm but a finger or toe. Cut off, the text will disappear into first the recycle bin (in case I change my mind) then into electronic death. I will then mourn its passing and wonder if I could have rescued it. Sure I have deleted paragraphs and sentences before. I have even changed track, but never something so radical and never on two books that won’t progress unless I do something drastic. It’s no use, the erase key awaits. I just have to swallow my reluctance and get on with it. I’ve been telling myself that for weeks.

Then. I delay again, fiddle with something else, do another re-edit on another story, work on the audio version, comment on Goodreads or write this blog, anything to put off the awful moment.

Enough – the mouse is here, the keyboard poised….

Just do it!

Go On….

Do I have to?