h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Only a third of the subject line applies to me. I don't do tarot, and turning thirty happened sol ong ago that I don't remember much about it.

Yeah, it sort of fell off my trailer hitch, too.

Writing, as it turns out, is not necessarily a benign pastime. If you're writing fiction, you have to be willing to do bad things to good characters. And in the process of doing those bad things, you are encouraged to show, not tell. So, all the bloody bits and the pain and shrieking. It's your job to describe them all. I don't know how C S Lewis was able to paint scenes so lovely you wanted to cry. He was a genius. Soon I hope to see his "Voyage of the Dawn Treader" in the nearest movie theater. This is the one that has a sea covered with white water lilies stretching as far as the eye can see. It also has Reepacheep, the swashbuckling mouse musketeer. Can it be a coincidence that Disney created the mouseketeers for "Mickey Mouse Club" not long after Reepacheep debuted?

Actually finding a "conflict" in which to put your characters can be a challenge in itself, especially if you care about the characters. Writing for children means you can make the conflict not-so-harrowing and the solution can be "there was never truly a conflict at all".

That's definitely good advice.

It's what I've done in my latest. Trouble now is I know where the story needs to go (generally, at least) but I'm not sure I like how it's getting there.

Some writers get a certain point and find themselves following what their characters are doing, as if the characters have become real by that point. Just go with it...

Well, this one started out writing itself. It kept me awake until I agreed to get out of bed and write it down, promising only to be "the general idea" and ended up keeping me up all night at the computer, because it just kept going. So yeah, the characters are more or less in the driver's seat. The biggest problem is I had a scenario I wanted in there, and the thing kinda drove around it, so now I need to backtrack to find out where to put what I missed. I also need to go over it for consistency problems, or at least to find out if there is any. Side-tracks can be a good thing, or they can be Not Good Things® if you know what I mean.

I know exactly what you mean.

The same thing happened to Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain when he started writing "Puddnhead Wilson." He ended up with two very different versions, and refused to choose one or the other, so he had both of them published.

That would be one solution, but I don't think that would work for me. I'm still going the same direction, and where it's at now I wanted to go, too. I just missed a spot.

I have faith that you'll get it straightened out just fine.