MMWUC: Lesson's Learned

Whether you've been to the Writer's Retreat Workshop these past 10 days, are cutting grass, promoting your upcoming novel, "Naked and Hungry", or have just released your 5-star debut novel, "Penelope and the Birthday Curse," you've done and learned something. That's what life is all about. From one moment to the next, everything changes. Even if you're semi-conscious on your pink couch, drinking warm Rolling Rock and eating old pork rinds, while watching a C*O*P*S episode for the fourth time, and wishing for Tyra Banks to join you, nothing is ever the same from moment to moment. And so it is with your stories. If your story is not moving along, if your protagonist isn't getting closer to attaining (or failing to attain) his/her/its story-arc goal, that is, the quest that they're on throughout the entire story (and every story is a quest for something), then why am I bothering to read your novel?

How are you moving the story along? For my book, Detective Stark is cutting his grass, because it's long, and he ruminates about his latest case, making connections of clues that he can't do when his brain is occupied with the steady stream of life. For me, it's time to pick the garden.