Quinn prowled through the dark forest. The moonlight didn’t reach her as she
slid from tree to tree, from shrub to shrub, always hiding in the shadows until she was far enough away from human campsites. She slipped her shirt over her head while she walked, impatient to get out of her clothes. Under a stooping oak tree, her shoes and pants followed until cool air brushed against her bare skin.

Dropping to her hands and knees, she connected with the damp earth. Heat rushed through her. In an effort not to scratch her burning skin, she clenched her fists and felt lengthening nails bite into her palms. Her muscles rippled, and she gasped as pain shot through her.

*

Jorie Price’s fingers flitted over the keyboard, keeping pace with her character’s movement through the forest. When Quinn stopped and shifted, Jorie paused with her fingers lingering over the laptop and reread what she had written – or rather rewritten. This was the third time she had changed the scene, and she still wasn’t sure whether it was working.

At first, she had portrayed the shifting process as painful. Then she had thought it made no sense that evolution would produce a skill that went hand in hand with pain and made the creature defenseless for a few minutes.

Rewriting and describing the change as a beautiful, magical moment didn’t feel right either. There’s no way in hell that breaking bones, shifting muscles, and rebuilding organs wouldn’t hurt.

So now she was rewriting again. Her fingers roamed across the keyboard again until, a few sentences later, Quinn was standing in the moonlight as a majestic tiger.

Jorie stopped and stared at the blinking cursor. How does a 140-pound woman become a 280-pound cat? Jorie was a mathematician at heart, and something wasn’t adding up here. She drummed her fingers against the side of her laptop. You should have thought about it and done more research before you started writing.

With all her other novels, she had done exactly that. Only after extensive research and careful plotting had she written the first word of the story.

This new project was different.

She had been so eager to write this book, to get started, that she had skipped most of her usual planning. And even some of the things that she had figured out beforehand, she had later changed because her rational mind and her instincts suddenly refused to work together and led her in two different directions.

“How about a little help from a cat expert, Agatha?” she asked the cat that had curled up next to her on the worn, comfortable couch.

Agatha was busy eyeing the laptop as if that would make the hated machine disappear from the favored spot on Jorie’s lap. When she noticed Jorie looking at her, the cat licked her bushy tail, uncomfortable with Jorie’s direct stare.

“What about you, Emmy?” Jorie’s gaze wandered to the calico ambling toward the kitchen. “Any words of advice for your favorite can opener?”

“Meow,” the cat said but didn’t elaborate. She walked on, looking over her shoulder as if to make sure that Jorie would follow her into the kitchen to feed her.

“Very helpful, thanks. And I just fed you half an hour ago, so that ‘I’m starving’ act is wasted on me.” With a sigh, Jorie saved what she had written so far and opened her e-mail program. “Procrastinating, aren’t we?” Despite the admonition, she clicked on a new e-mail from her beta reader. Maybe it would cheer her up.

Hi, J.W.,
Still having problems with the story? Have you thought about putting it away for a little while? I know it works for some authors. Maybe write a short story or get started on a new project. You could even start research on the sequel to AVH that you said you might write one day. It would give you time to figure out a few things about this trouble-making story.
Hang in there, and let me know what you decide.
Ally

That was unusual. In the three years that they had worked together, Ally had never made any suggestions on what to write. Seems she’s not as comfortable with this new kind of story as she said. She wants me to return to my previous genre.

Normally, putting the story aside for a while and focusing on something else would have been good advice. Not this time. Writing this story was important to her, not just on a professional level but on a purely personal level too.

“No admitting defeat,” she murmured and reopened the file.

Her cell phone rang before she had written even a single word.

Jorie groaned. “I knew I should have turned it off.” She set the laptop on the coffee table and got up from the couch before Agatha could settle down on her lap. Barefoot, she padded into the bedroom, where she’d left the phone.

“Hi, Mom,” she said. Looking at the display wasn’t necessary. Only her mother and her agent had her cell phone number, and since Peter had dropped her when she had refused to give up on her new novel, that left one option.

“Jorie, how are you, darling?” Her mother’s warm voice came through the receiver.

I have a headache as if I’m about to give birth to Athena; my nightmares haven’t let me sleep through the night in weeks, and I have a serious case of writer’s block, she thought. Aloud she said, “I’m fine, Mom.”

“Are you getting enough sleep?” her mother asked. They always went through the same questions, and Jorie always gave the same answers, yet her mother never stopped worrying about her.

“Yes, Mom,” Jorie said dutifully. “Must be all that fresh air out here.”

“Good. And have you met someone?”

Jorie sighed and looked out her bedroom window, taking in the forest at the edge of the small town. Osgrove wasn’t exactly a favorite hangout for most people her age. “I’m not here to meet someone. I’m here to write, Mom.” It wasn’t that she hated people or wasn’t good with them; she just wasn’t interested in being around them for more than a few hours. The solitude of being a writer suited her. She had some contact with other people — her beta reader, her editor, some readers and fellow writers — but it was limited and on her terms.

“I know, but ...”

“I’m fine, Mom,” Jorie said again. “Listen, I have to get back to my writing. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?” She wasn’t in the mood to answer more of her mother’s worried questions about the way she lived her life. Guilt scratched at the edges of her consciousness, but she pushed it away and ended the call.

Back in the living room, the screen saver had come on. A small, red cartoon cat was chasing a ball of wool all over the laptop’s screen. “That’s how I feel,” Jorie said and lifted the notebook back onto her lap. “Chasing the elusive ball of wool, but never quite catching it.” She stroked her fingers over the touch pad and watched as the red kitten was replaced with the text of her story. “Just write. Don’t think.”