I Spent 3 Months Revising 1 Beat (here’s why it wasn’t “wasted time”)

Did I tell you about the the time I spent three months revising a single beat in my novel?

Not three months revising the novel. Three months revising one beat. Of my twenty-first novel.

The book was my murder mystery, How to Write a Murder (One dead body, seven mystery writers, and they all know how to get away with murder), and the beat was the Bad Guys Close In (for those of you familiar with Save the Cat!)

I have to say, this book was the most complicated thing I’ve ever attempted. (In true Jessica fashion, I had to challenge myself.) Five points of view. Five characters who each know different things at different times, plus a reader who knows more than any of them, and an omniscient “mystery writer” narrator (pun intended) who knows everything.

Oh, and it’s a meta mystery too.

In short: a mind puzzle. But I love mind puzzles, so I was all in.

Here’s what made the Bad Guys Close In (and all the beats really) so sticky: With five points of view, I had seemingly endless pieces to move around. I could change who narrates, who knows what when, who finds what piece of evidence where, what the reader learns and how. (I think there was one reveal in this beat that moved so many times, every character narrated it at some point!)

I kept having epiphanies. If I just change this one little thing, everything else will fall into place. So I’d change it. And yes, a few things would fall into place…while the rest would fall apart.

Rinse and repeat…for three months.

Honestly, most of the time, I felt like I was just wasting time.

What kept me going through all of this? A little daily ritual I developed along the way.

After every writing session, I’d turn on my recording app and talk through what happened that day—what I wrote, what was working, what wasn’t working, and why. And by the end of each recording, I would usually have an idea of what to try next.

So every day, instead of ending the day feeling helpless, I ended it feeling inspired. Just by keeping my mind open and committing myself to keep trying to new things, new angles, new ideas.

And eventually, after doing this time and time again, I broke free.

I finished the Bad Guys Close In beat, streamed on through the All is Lost and Dark Night of the Soul and broke through to the Finale.

Now, you’re probably waiting to hear what the one idea was that broke me out of this three-month rut.

Well, that’s the twist. Looking back, there was no single moment where it all clicked. No one epiphany that turned out to be the epiphany and solved everything. Just a lot of trial and error until it worked.

Which means all that time I thought I was wasting? It wasn’t actually wasted. It was the work. The process. I had to first eliminate all the options that didn’t work, so that I could zero in on the ones that did.

Every failed attempt, every scene that didn’t quite connect, every reveal that needed to be moved (again!), it was all part of process my brain had to go through to make the right connections and solve the puzzle.

So if you’re stuck in the woods right now, worried you’re just wasting time. I promise you, you’re not. You’re doing the necessary work., priming your brain to make the connections, eliminating the wrong paths so you can recognize the right one when it comes along.

So keep going. Keep rearrranging those puzzle pieces. And remember, they call it a work in progress for a reason.

September 6th, 2026