Yesterday was my first day of a week of stay-cation, devoted to getting more sleep, and doing more writing, than customary for me.

The sleep hasn’t been bad, but I’m pleased to say that the writing’s already been beyond my expectations.

Here’s the situation.

I’ve been worrying a particular story concept for quite a few years now. I had a basic idea—transfer the traditional hard-boiled detective story from a modern city (such as New York) to the Viking Age and an early medieval town (specifically, old York in England, which was a Viking town for some time). The mystery would have fantasy elements, because that’s the sort of thing I write.

But whatever I did with it, I couldn’t seem to make it come alive. I don’t know how many starts I’ve made on the thing, but they all lost momentum and rolled to a slow stop.

Recently, in my new-found enthusiasm for the old movie, “Algiers” (which was also an inspiration for “Casablanca”), I found an approach that seemed promising. Instead of my hero being a happy denizen of the “big city” (such as it was), I’d make him an exile. A sort of refugee who dreams of another place but can’t go back. Like Pepe le Moco in “Algiers,” he’ll meet a woman who’ll embody his lost home (Norway) to him, and she will reawaken his sleeping aspirations, and it will probably all come to some sort of tragic end (I’m not sure yet. But love stories tend to come out badly in my books).

So I’d gotten some stuff down, but when I went to work writing yesterday, I was faced with a problem that kind of scared me. I knew my main character had to have a back story. I had to explain why he could never go back to Norway. I knew it had to be big and dramatic, and my mind was entirely uncontaminated by ideas.

This scared me. This went to the great fear I’ve been struggling with for some time now. In my secret heart, I often doubt whether I can come up with a new story again. In my last years with Baen, while I waited for a thumbs up or thumbs down on a manuscript they’d been sitting on for (literally) years, I got highly motivated and wrote four (4) novels as quickly as I could. I’d missed a deadline for Baen, and I wanted to prove to them that that was a fluke due to circumstances beyond my control (deaths and sickness in the family, as it happened). I wanted them to know that I could produce books reliably, and on time.

Then they cut me loose, and I’ve been sitting on the four novels ever since. Nordskog (God bless them) picked up West Oversea now, so it’s down to three. But I still have three books ready to go, so when I’ve felt like writing, I’ve generally just done an editing pass on one of those.

Hence my fear that I couldn’t come up with a new story.

But yesterday I did what every professional has to do. I sat down at my word processor, and started typing. One sentence at a time. Sometimes one word at a time. I had no idea what was coming next until very close to the end of the section. It was like digging a ditch. Pure work, without any thrill of creation.

And yet, when I was done, I knew I’d written a powerful, dramatic, and moving scene that completely explained my hero’s character and eccentric life choices.

Then came the thrill.

And that, dear friends, is why we write.

(Photo credit: Jupiter Images)