I am not sure I’ve ever blogged about the novel in progress before, but I am a quarter of the way through the novel in progress and I am freaking out. I’ve slowly come to realize that it is not working.

Not the characters, they are fine. Strong. In fact, the are so strong they are all insisting on their own little plots. Which means I now I have too many little plots. There is a romance one, the family one, the one involving his bosses and his own little sub plot involving the past. Than there is the main one which was supposed to be mysterish – a murder, maybe a kidnapping. On top of that, there is an overarching arc that I don’t have a firm grip on. So. There is just too much stuff. Too much going on.

I think I could write a lot of different stories about the characters. I could write:

(1) a romance. Several romances, in fact, one involving his sister, another about his father and one about him. Plus other characters. That’s at least three books!  Maybe as many as five or six. I’ve read plenty of romances, but never had an urge to write one, let alone half a dozen.

(2) something on politics. This would involve the family and bosses and multiple viewpoints. My main character would no longer be my main character. I think the focus would shift to the father.

(3) the mysterish urban fantasy I had originally intended to write.

I still want to write the urban fantasy I had intended to write originally. But I think in order to do that, I need to scale back on all the other elements. The romance, the relationships, the stuff involving politics. I can develop his romance more slowly, put it back at a point where he is not seeing so much of his lover. Same with his family relationships and maybe take a different angle on the politics, one that will allow me to show there really are people out to get him.

But all that means I have to go back to page 1. Almost everything I’ve written so far (thousands and thousands of words. weeks and weeks of work) has to go. Which is why I am freaking out.

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