It happened again today: the blinding flash of insight, while I was doing something else (this time it was driving): when I know OH DUH! what happens next in the book, what I was missing all along, what I have to go back and fix…I actually yelled “Duh!” out loud, and drove on, toward the gym, as the whole scene unfolded in my head…I stopped at a red light and got honked at when I missed it turning green, because my attention was entirely in the scene I was going to write when I got back home. I actually considered turning around and going home to write it right then, but I’m glad I went for my swim instead, because of course all the little ancillary things became clear while I was swimming, and the scene took great detailed shape (like a movie), and when I got home I was able to make notes of it all, and actually write the scene itself.
I LOVE it when stuff like that happens.
So what it amounted to is not much “forward” progress in this edit, but actually huge progress, because this scene makes EVERYTHING which comes next make sense, and it was even nicely set up, even though I had no idea it was going to happen…well, a part of my brain obviously did, even if the conscious part didn’t.
This is all happening because I am finally able to hold the whole book in my head, which I was never able to do before. I am so, so happy that this is working this way now, I feel like I have leveled up as a writer. I hope my (eventual) readers think so too!
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Tomorrow I head briefly to Seattle, for a couple of quick social events; back home Monday, to finish this darn book and let Mark finish the project he’s been working on. Then we hope to go somewhere for a few days and RELAX, and celebrate our three-years-since-we-met anniversary. 🙂 (Anniversary of dating comes a few months later. We’ll celebrate that too, if I have anything to say about it.)
And, go Giants!