Fail >.<

I'm not stuck, but I'm at 27K and my characters have only just got on a boat to leave England and there's a ton and a half of stuff they have to do in America that's what i researched and what will be more exciting than a couple of people on freakin' trains. They took a side trip to the beach for heaven's sake. And then I wasted 1/2 an hour of my limited writing time today looking up ships that would have been leaving Liverpool for NY in 1883 and finding out if they had 2nd class or only 1st and steerage. (picked a boat at random that was going the right route and then found out that the guy who was later the captain of the titanic was 4th mate on the boat I picked at this time. I think I'm working him in. But I digress. As always.)

What gets me going when I am stuck:

Pick a mundane activity and teach it to your characters (challenge on another group I'm on was getting someone to knit). But anything: cooking, a sport, etc

Sit them down for dinner and describe it in lavish terms and tell what everyone thinks about it.

Kill someone.

Invent someone new. Make them disagree with everything everyone else thinks.

Have your MC have sex with someone wildly inappropriate (only if you're over 18, of course!)

I totally cheated last night when i got into a long discussion on religion on facebook when I should have been writing, but was stuck and didn't know why my characters wanted to go to a freezing cold beach in England (it's freezing even in August). I ended up copying and pasting about half of what i wrote into my writing, putting my own religious views in my male MC's mouth. i wrote 'em so I get to keep 'em, right?

And dude! Grand Nationals as in marching bands? I was a Talawanda band geek waaaayyyyyy back a long time ago. I was there in the years that we had 3 directors in 4 years and the band started really stinking, But hey. Not my fault. Scary thing? the current director was a percussionist there when I was, a year or two behind me. THAT's how old I am.

And keep going. even if you don't get 50K, these are words that YOU wrote that helped you learn to write better. And someday you might reread it and say - oooooh this has potential. Or you might stay whew, stinky. either way, you will have learned something.

Phyllis

2007 (winner) - untitled contemporary romance (never finished)
2008 (winner) - Victorian English romance novel (finished, still editing)

Haha - yes, grand nationals as in marching bands. T'wanda went on earlier today. Three bands after this one... I really wan to get just 500 written, then I'll be at 20,000... but we will see :-\