Last night, at about 8:30, I finished the first draft of the first third of the book project I’m working on right now. I felt happily exhausted, pleased with what the characters had done in these first several chapters, and excited that I would now be moving even deeper into the story and what I want to say. Shutting down my computer, I walked away from the desk feeling complete.

For about three hours.

At 11:30, I was lying in bed next to the soundly sleeping Frank obsessing about my project. Should I change the main character’s name? It’s kind of trendy and her parents are very old-fashioned people – it doesn’t make sense that they’d give her that name. And the explanation I’d given for it, in chapter two, was pretty clunky. No way would it ever work. But is she too much ingrained in my mind with the name that it would be suicide to change it now? Or am I still early enough in the draft that I can change it?

From there it just got worse. Do I need to include more scenes and, by extension, characters to show the protagonist’s evolution into a more assertive, true-to-herself individual? Is the secondary storyline with her best friend enough to carry it through the entire book, or is it a complete dud? Will readers identify with the story? Will it help them realize something about themselves?

I realized that lying in bed and being consumed by these questions was getting me nowhere. So I did what a writer would do: I dragged myself out of bed and pounded out these questions, my thoughts, crazy ideas, anything I could think of that might help me see myself through this story. It helped, it really did. I have a clearer vision of what I want to accomplish in this book, and even though I’m still not exactly sure how I’m going to get there, I’m a little bit further on my way.

I ended up crawling back into bed at 2:45. Good thing I didn’t have to work today.