vampire middles

Boy, I either post on boards, or I do my blog thing, but I don’t seem to do both. I had a few days of interesting discussions in various forums and dropped off the blogosphere. The clamoring throng of my dozen of fans will be so disappointed. Sorry!

So, I’ve been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, starting at season 1, to fill the void in my vampire-tv life, since Moonlight was canceled. Sigh. And now I have added the interesting, if a bit smarmy, True Blood. Then, in the fall, we’ll have the movie version of Twilight, more vamp-madness. Vampires are the new pink!

With all this vampire goodness surrounding me, I have come to the middle of my own vampire novel, 50,000 words in, the terrible middle, the point in all novel writing where, not only do I feel certain that this particular novel is stupid, pointless drivel, but everything I have ever written is drivel, and I should, as has been obvious to everyone, especially my agent, I’m sure, pack it in. Immediately.

And so I say to myself: Progress! I thought I would never get to this point!

Because if I don’t get to this, this awful, wrist-slitting section of the novel writing process, how will I ever get to the heady, slippery-slope of the last third, where the end starts thundering towards me and I can’t stop, Jane get me off this crazy thing—and then BLAMMO, I’m done?

Well, I’ll tell you: I can’t.

So here’s to moody, miserable certainty that my writing is all masturbatory, derivative, bunk! If it weren’t for self-loathing and the knowledge that one is committing artistic suicide, I feel certain the vast majority of the novels in the world would have shining, hopeful beginnings, and powerful, soul-stirring endings, and absolutely nothing in between. Because writing the middle always sucks. There is no escape. Abandon hope all ye who enter here.