The first novel I ever wrote, as I've said before, was a deer hunting horror story. I love deer hunting, however over the years my time spent at this activity has dwindled. A few years ago, I actually didn't even hunt at all--something I honestly thought would never happen, but hey life happens and I had to work, for the good of the family.
What has struck me as odd is that this story never had a brother or sister or even a distant cousin. This horror story, centered around deer hunting, was the only story about hunting I could come up with. At the time. For years since then, I've wracked my brain, working hard to come up with more stories. The ones I constructed weren't very good, with the exception of one or two minor stories--I believe those are still sitting in the mental trunk.
Over a week ago, on November 9th, I went out hunting with my fifteen-year-old son.
Not only did I come up with a detailed plan to rewrite my first horror story, I came up with another one as well as a mystery/suspense series. Roughly a month ago, I also wrote a deer hunting short story--my next submission to the Writers of the Future contest.
Then I realized that all I needed to construct these stories was time. Time and life experience. It's not necessarily a bad thing to set something off to the side because you're not ready. When Stephen King came up with the idea for 11/22/63, it was in the early 1970s and he knew he wasn't ready to tell a tale of that magnitude.
So he waited.
If you're having troubles with a story, set it off to the side and do something else. Because time is not necessarily a bad thing.
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