Scribbles & Munch

      Confession: I haven't written on any of my manuscripts for over a week. Since just about every published author I know strongly recommends writing every day, I am, essentially, negligent.
      I thought I had writer's block. The Muse wasn't prompting me. I had no lines of prose running through my head, begging to be recorded, as is typically the case. Granted, I had little free time to write anyway: I had family staying over at my rather tiny apartment and we had plenty of other fun things to do. That being said, my mother-in-law is a wonderfully supportive woman who would more than likely have lauded my attempts to smuggle in a little story time here and there. But I didn't even feel a prompt to write.
      Today I finally had time: a glorious few hours in the afternoon with no chores, no errands, and no work, and I made myself a cup of tea and a couple pieces of toast (rosemary bread topped with butter and blackberry jam, yum!) and sat down at my laptop. That was when I noticed the discomfort. More than discomfort, I was actually feeling aversion.
      Don't be silly, I told myself firmly. You only need to read a couple pages prior to where you left off, and then you'll be back in the groove, full steam ahead!
      So I opened my Word document, found the page where I'd left off, and read this:

"The servant who answered the VanGelden's front door was a middle-aged man with a face like starched linen."

      And then I realized the source of my aversion. I don't have writer's block at all--I'm paralyzed by indecision.
      It all comes back to that post I wrote a few weeks ago about style. Yes, I have several - probably too many - long patches of unbroken dialogue in some of my stories. The reason was because I wanted readers to sift through, looking for clues (there are mysteries in these stories, after all). But these patches are lengthy, and need to be broken up. But other than that...other than that....
      Take my sample sentence. My zombie novel has a lot of observations like this, where I, the writer, say something is like this. I don't say my character thought something is like this, I just say it is. If the character makes the observation, this gives the reader insight into the character. But at this juncture, I want my main character to be a bit of a mystery, I want the reader to be invested in her story, but fully feel how little they know about her. However, if I'm over-doing it, nobody with empathize with her, the story will come across as stand-offish. How much exposition will make this too long? This is supposed to be an action story, I don't want to bore anyone...GAH!!!
      Sometimes I think I liked writing better before I was interested in publishing--I didn't worry so much about what other people thought, I could just enjoy telling a tale.