Now that I'm two-thirds of the way through my second novel, I can say with absolute certainty that this is where I start to flounder. I did it with SENTINEL and it's happening again with TOPAZ. Anyone else experience the third-act slump, or am I weird?

I have this mental image in my head of my characters looking at me with puzzled looks on their faces, saying, "By this point, you should know who we are. Why is this so difficult?"

Why indeed?

Maybe it's the pressure to continue pushing my characters along their arcs from who they were to who they will be by the end of the book.

Maybe it's the realization that some of the ideas I had for this part of the book are just plain goofy now that I'm here.

Maybe the need to start tying up loose ends is a tad stifling.

Maybe I just need a break. Grr.

I've set myself a deadline to have the first draft of TOPAZ done by the end of the summer. Originally I wanted to have it revised and out on agent queries by then, but that's not going to happen. With this new timeframe, I'm hoping maybe it'll be out by the end of September. We'll see. If I can get my mind to feel less rust-filled, I think it's doable.

What do you do when you hit a bit of a slump?

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TOPAZ status: Chapter 19 is done but I'm not happy with it. Grr.