Feeling Guilty for Feeling Bad

I hate feeling bad. Who doesn't, right? No one wants to feel less than 100%.

But right now it's worse because feeling bad means not writing. It's hard to string together prose (or even a blog post) when it feels like something's boring into the base of my skull. At least with a blog post, I don't have to edit my work beyond making sure the grammar is decent.

So, in an effort to feel not so guilty about today, I've gone over some things in progress and hit serendipity. Two of those WIP that have been sitting sketched on my PC for untold weeks and months can be combined into one stronger storyline. They just sort of clicked today. AND the story found its voice (rather, I found its voice) and main character. To my utter shock, it's not who I thought it would be.

I'm not sure why this happens, but so far the story I thought was YA turned out to be better suited to adults, and this one - which I thought was decidedly adult - now has a younger POV.

What had been an ensemble story of five+ threads I couldn't figure out how to weave together just found themselves knit around a teenager who is the focal point of the whole story. That's what was missing: cohesion. I knew this kid was in the story for some reason, but I couldn't make her fit with the others until today.

Hopefully, when the horrible grinding at the back of my head stops, I'll be able to tweak what I already have of the story, stitch it to the other one, and come up with something wonderful. It all came down to figuring out what my mysterious stranger mumbled as he lay dying:

"Come and find me, Mandy."