I finally figured out why I kept losing my story mid-draft
Three novels started. Three novels abandoned somewhere around chapter eight.
Not because I ran out of ideas. I always knew what happened next. Something else kept breaking down and I could never quite name it.
Sat down last week and actually thought about what chapter eight looks like every time. I'm deep enough into the story that there are a hundred small decisions already made, this character knows that, this event happened before that, this place looks like this. And none of it is anywhere useful. It's in six different documents, some notes app, a few voice memos I never transcribed.
So I'm writing chapter eight but I'm also trying to hold the entire novel in my head at the same time. And I can't. Nobody can. So the story starts contradicting itself and I lose confidence in it and I stop.
That's what was happening. Every time.
Fixed my setup before starting the new one, moved everything into a Skrib writing studio so character details, timeline, research, worldbuilding notes, and the actual draft all live together. Chapter eight felt completely different. I could just write it instead of also trying to remember everything around it.
Still not easy. But a different kind of hard.
Anyone else figure out what their specific breaking point was?