My Novel Took a Wrong Turn

I think sometimes I just want it to be over. I haven't been working on this novel for an inordinately long time; it just seems like it. And now I've gotten to the place that my other three novels landed me in ~ I have nothing more to say.

What happened? Well, I think I played out all the drama up to this point, and if I can't come up with another exciting turn of events, all my effort will have been worthless. 

I wonder if other authors ever paint themselves into a corner. Maybe that doesn't happen with outlining, but it's not as if I don't have general ideas of where to take a story just because I'm a discovery writer. I loved creating outrageous scenarios for my main character to wade through, but I've run out.

Maybe.

The story may have taken a wrong turn. Initially the main character was supposed to run back to her hometown, defeated. She'd burned her bridges with her record label, and she ended up owing them money (for breaching her contract). She's savvy enough to know that no one else in the business is going to offer her a second chance. The homecoming scenario would have opened up a lot of possibilities.

Instead, on the spur of the moment, I chose to have the love interest show up just as she was loading up her car to leave town. That was sweet and all, but it kept her in Nashville with nothing new to do. At least nothing interesting.

As much as I hate scrapping scenes I worked hard on, I think this needs scrapping. I have to weigh my wasted time against making the story interesting. Deleted scenes are never gone forever. I can cut them and paste them into a new document for safekeeping, just in case. But I've pretty much decided that I'm going to have my MC veer back toward her original destination. There was no harm in trying something unexpected, but if it's not working, it's not working. 

"Wanting it to be over" is a defeatist attitude. I said once that this will almost certainly be my last novel, so I owe it to myself to write a good one.