What To Do When You’ve Written Yourself Into A Corner

The Pitfalls of Sticking To Your Plan

I wrote several essays, did a number of interviews, and appeared in various media outlets to support the release of LAST SEEN. I thought it would be cool to share these items here directly. This piece first appeared here on Substack with

The Shit About Writing Team

on August 1, 2025. Their blog is well worth a follow!

You plan. You plot. You outline, or maybe you’re even pantsing this whole endeavor. Regardless, no matter how much work you’ve put in, sometimes the story just isn’t working.

I was at dinner with writer friends recently, discussing (and, all right, bemoaning) an issue in my latest novel. One offered a specific solution that removed the impediment entirely, and I explained I’d have to rewrite the entire book if I changed course at this point. My other friend said, “Well, if you’re stuck and need to rework it all anyway, would that be such a bad thing?”

Yes. Yes, it would. The worst! I am loath to throw out words and start again, and when I’ve hit a stumbling block deep into the telling of a story, even more so. Call me stubborn, but I believe my subconscious has led me to that point for a reason, and there is always—always—a path out.

Unless there isn’t.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

In my new novel, Last Seen, I hit such a stumbling block. I always know when a story has gone sideways on me: My word counts dwindle, I find a million things to do that don’t involve opening the manuscript. I feel the frustration building and building. I talk to friends, my agent, my dad, my husband, anyone who’ll listen, really, about the story, not quite sure what the problem is. Those chats always bring clarity: I figure it out in a lightning-bolt moment, and then move on, generally forgetting the block forever.

This time… I was over 35,000 words into the book, and something was wrong. But I was also live writing the book on my Substack, so I was delving into the minutiae of the story, its foibles and triumphs alike. It was a lot of fun to write my way through the block by trying to explain to the reader what was wrong. (If you’d like to read the in-depth breakdown, this was the step in the process where I realized I’d messed up royally and had to shift.)

Here’s what happened.

When my story began, the main character, Halley James, was 24, and the book was set in 2007. Those were not entirely arbitrary choices—when one travels back in time to write a novel, it’s very helpful to pick a moment you’re pretty familiar with. 2007 was a seminal year for me—my first novel was published in November that year. It felt prophetic.

I built the entire 2007 timeline of the story around my 24-year-old discovering a huge secret about her past. That might not be a big deal to some, but they make writer math jokes for a reason, friends. This timeline was very complicated, with people dying, moving, and going missing across two decades, so I built a massive spreadsheet with birthdates, death dates, missing dates, moving dates, and other essential moments so it would be easy to follow along (and so my copyeditor wouldn’t hate me too much.)

In the first iteration, in 2007, my Halley was just starting her life. She was finishing up her master’s degree, dating a hot new guy, had multiple job offers from various D.C. alphabet agencies, and had the world by the tail.

And I just wasn’t connecting with her.

It’s been a while since I was 24, yes, but that wasn’t it. Nothing had happened to her yet. She did have the world by the tail. And that just didn’t feel right tonally for the story. Last Seen is a dark and insular thriller, told primarily from Halley’s point of view as she discovers her entire life is a lie and sets out to find the truth, and perhaps, exact revenge. A plucky main character was incongruous with the tone that had appeared in the story.

It took a lot of discussion with my team and challenging myself to pinpoint the problem. I finally realized that Halley was simply too young. Too audacious. She had to journey into a dark place, but she hadn’t experienced enough darkness to make her reactions to the story work. If you don’t truly understand fear and loss, can you recognize them and realize actual danger? Yes, she lost her mother when she was six years old to a car accident. But that made her a more determined character, one driven by the possibilities of the world around her, rather than knocking her down.

And that’s a great character, but not the one I needed.

But the timeline, remember? Everything was predicated on Halley finding out the truth in 2007.

It took a few weeks to talk myself into it, but I finally decided to change the entire book’s timeline by moving it forward ten years. Ten was a nice round number that allowed the spreadsheet to be updated without terrorizing my own mind trying to keep up with the dates.

The year is now 2017, and Halley is 34. She definitely does not have life by the tail. Instead, her life is collapsing around her ears, and she’s longing for the promise that the 24-year-old version of her had. Her complexity comes from her disappointments. She is primed to experience a knock-down blow, one that defines her as a human. She will either get up, dust herself off, and move ahead to right the wrongs, or she will stay covered in the dust and desiccate. It makes her so much more real and identifiable. We’ve all been there, having to make that elemental choice in how to move forward with our lives after loss and disappointment. Our actions define our character; to create dynamic, relatable fictional characters, they must also journey this path. Grow or die, and that makes the story.

I rewrote the opening to reflect her new reality. She is fired from the job she loves instead of picking a place to start her career. She and her husband (the same hot guy she’d just started dating) are separated after ten years of trying to make it work. So when her father phones to tell her he’s had a bad fall and is having surgery, returning home isn’t as much drudgery as it is an escape.

And when she discovers the dark secret her father’s been hiding from her all these years—that her mother didn’t die in a car accident but was actually murdered—the impact of that huge lie hits ten times harder. It knocks her down entirely—this woman, who has had the worst day of her life, realizes everything she’s based her life on is quicksand.

The profound shift it brings to the character simply couldn’t have the same impact on a 24-year-old.

Yes, it caused a raft of revisions throughout the book and the spreadsheet, some of which even lingered through the editorial process as we caught all the idiosyncrasies involved in the shift. However, the story was stronger, the characters deeper, and the betrayals more severe. Which brings me to the best advice I can offer you …

Whenever you have the opportunity to deepen your story, take it. And if you sense something isn’t right, take a step back and be honest with yourself about why. Don’t hesitate to discuss it, to take a chance on a different approach. The solution is always right there, waiting for you.

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