Stuck
Will Remains Writing for April 2026
Greetings from the 12th floor, for the moment relocated to the mountains of western Maryland.
April was a challenging month creatively. I honestly can’t say I know where the time went. I did more than nothing, but my output dropped considerably from the first three months of the year. In fairness, those three months were unusually productive, so it was only a matter of time before I’d slow down, and I’m still ahead of what I wanted to have accomplished by the end of the first third of 2026.
Yes, 1/3 of the year has passed already. I’m sorry to spring that on you.
Coincidentally, I’ve also reached the 1/3 point in my novel in progress and experienced some tsuris over what would come next. I thought I had set up the next section of 4-5 chapters in the first quarter of the book, but as I drafted them out, I didn’t feel they coalesced with what had gone before. Worse, they dragged. After a dozen chapters of turning points, foreshadowing, and backstory hints, I had written myself into a run of chapters that had a lot of physical action, but not enough story.
Normally, this would be the point in a novel-in-progress where I’d regress back to Chapter One and start shuffling, but instead I decided to tough it out. I did go back to re-read the first 30,000 words of the novel, and saw that this was indeed where the character needed to be. If I didn’t go forward with this turning point, I’d have to rewrite big sections of the opening to set up something different. That might still happen! But if it does, I’ll have a full manuscript in front of me and I’ll have a better view of what’s working or isn’t.
Moving forward, I wrote the portions of the chapters that still worked, chopped up the scene and chapter breaks differently, added micro-tension, and broke up two significant confrontations so the build-up and foreshadowing were stronger. And I added a big moment that was missing from my first outline, thanks to my re-read of the first section of the book. Something Significant happens in Chapters Five - Six and I knew I would have to call back to that at some point in the novel, but I thought it would happen later. Happily, I found a better place for it smack in the middle of a few troublesome chapters. Like me, my Main Character pulls some information out of his back pocket at the right moment to save his bacon.
Ultimately, there are still a few aspects of this section I’m not happy with, but I’m sufficiently satisfied that I can keep moving forward and fix it in post.
So, in the end, I did finish drafting the outline of my novel, as well as two complete chapters. I have the next three sketched out in some detail but they are nowhere near done. I also finished two blog posts and started drafting a few more.
That’s not nothing.
Also in this letter:
Posts from April 2026
Writing Advice
A Parting Song
Monthly Posts
Last month, I wrote about setting and the hero’s code, which is remarkably like your own. I also complained about money and looked back at my creative year so far, which has been pretty great.
When Setting Matters
Money Matters
The Hero’s Code
Aim High
Book Club
I also continued my series discussing writing topics presented in Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, which is inexplicably more than 30 years old.
Bird by Bird: Done
Bird by Bird: Frame of Mind - Moral Credo
Bird by Bird: Frame of Mind - Intuition
Bird by Bird: Index Cards
Bird by Bird: Calling Around
Bird by Bird: Friends
Writing Advice
I follow about 30 blogs sharing writing advice and bookmark the good stuff. Here are some of the best posts from April, including the top two, which were quite timely:
“Ghosting Your Own Book: How to Cross the Finish Line When You Want to Run Away” - Anne Marina Pellicciotto, Jane Friedman
“What Your Story Problems Reveal About Your Writing Brain” - Colleen Story, Writers Helping Writers
“Playing with Form to Tell a Story” - Yann Martel, Lit Hub
“Positive Tension & Stakes: The Potential for Things to Go Right” - September Fawkes
“The Fastest Fix for a Weak Opening Scene” - Seth Harwood
“4 Ways Specificity Drives Your Story Forward” - Kathryn Craft, Writer Unboxed
A Parting Song
Shout out to all the women standing up and taking no shit.
No shame, no regret
What you see is what you get
Watch below or listen on Spotify.
I was going to suggest that there is nothing wrong with leaving some chapters that drag, just move on and come back to them, and you will know what to do. Then I read further, and you have managed this already.
We all do it, and you are right to worry about it, and not just move on. I hate reading books where chapters drag, and the writer couldn't be arsed to make the story work so just left them to annoy the reader.
In a world where it is so easy for people to publish their own writing, it is good to find somebody who cares, and takes the trouble to keep working at it. Thank you for taking the time to let other writers know we might not be as mad as we think we are.