Kimberly Gardner

Whenever I begin working on a new story it’s with a mix of excitement and trepidation. The excitement comes from the knowledge that I’m beginning a new journey with a whole new set of traveling companions and there’s quite a lot of mystery associated with that.

The trepidation comes from my fear that I might not finish that journey.

That fears persists until I hear the click.

What click, you may ask.

Well, you can’t hear it. No one can hear it except me because it’s inside my head. It’s the click that tells me that the story is working and that I will be able to finish it. That isn’t to say that the story will get published. It doesn’t even mean that everything I come up with will be good or that it will stay in the story in its final form. It only means that I will finish.

I heard the click yesterday while I was working on the first sex scene in my current wip, Sugar in the Raw.

I have around 7,500 words written on the story, most of them are keepers, I think. Or if the words themselves aren’t keepers at least the ideas are.

My crit partners are always teasing me about the amount of rewriting I do with every story. I am a chronic rewriter/reviser. It’s the only way I know to work out the story. Some people, some writers, can do all that preplanning outside the actual writing and I sort of envy them for it.

I can’t do that. I’ve tried. It seems to come from being a pantser rather than a plotter. I can plot till the cows come home. I can make lists of scenes, write out scene cards, the whole deal. But until I actually sit down and write a few scenes, spend time with the characters and get to know them and their quirks I have no idea if the story is going to work, if it will bloom and become a flower or die in the seedling stage.

Except that there’s the click.