Deep Freeze

This post is from my group blog, Quirk & Quill. To read the full post, follow the link at the bottom.

I've been working on a novel that begins with a deep freeze.

(This pic happens to be from Chicago's awful storm of 2011 and not from the Polar Vortex, but you get the idea. Burial in ice and snow.)

I write outlines, synopses, pages of notes; I write drafts full of characters that have since been discarded. My latest Scrivener file contains 13,000 words. An earlier one: 271,000. Still another: 233,000. Much of that is repeated. Some of it isn't. Sometimes, I think it's YA. Other times, it feels more middle grade. Sometimes I think it's a series, and then my brain starts to shiver.

As I wander through this story, I feel lost as my girl in the snow, fighting her way through wind tunnels of ice chips that bite at her cheeks. And the weather outside matches my fictional wasteland.

Read the rest of this post on Quirk & Quill . . .