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So I'm trawling through my old lj entries tagged "writing," because... Well, because. And I find this entry from way back in the summer of 2008:

I should write some kind of thing where this girl is, like, addicted to magic somehow, except it turns out she's a mage and she's channelling magic without realising it and causing all kinds of chaos. And maybe there's another a mage who causes car accidents on purpose with his magic, then gets the drivers to sue each other for a cut of the winnings. Or something.

Why have I forgotten this and why have I not done this yet? Is this an actual idea, or the half-baked ramblings of a woman with too much sugar in her system?

I can honestly say that I've never worked as hard on anything in my life as I have on Wild. Version 4 is still kicking my arse, but I'm in a better position now than I was last week, when I was just about ready to throw my entire laptop away and never write again. Wisely, instead of doing that, I emailed my (very patient) agent, confessed I was having a crisis of confidence and threw out some crazy suggestions for getting myself back on track.

She approved my crazy suggestions, and now I am back on track. Huzzahs! Just goes to show that most of the time, you probably already know what your novel needs. You just need to step away and look at it objectively, instead of dashing in, flailing your arms, screaming and hoping for the best.

I gave myself Friday and Saturday off because my arm was playing up, but then on Sunday I got cracking again. I was up til 10.30 last night working away, and went to bed finally feeling like I'd made some progress with the damn novel. It's easy to feel overwhelmed - I've cut nearly 20k from Wild since I started this particularl redraft, and written a lot more fresh material than I originally thought I'd have to, and I definitely came down with a case of The Fear last week.

But I overcame that and now the end is in sight. The new plot elements are firmly entrenched, and the older elements that I'm keeping in are slotting back into place slowly but surely. My one lingering fear is that I've reintroduced these older elements too late in the story, but never mind. I'm determined to keep ploughing on until it's done now, if only so I don't have...

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