I had one of those breakthroughs today…I was working away, rewriting a little scene in my edits in chapter 12 in Hobgoblin, when one of the characters suddenly said to another character, “You’re lying.”
Oh my, I thought. What’s she going to say to that?
And I waited for the response, and Character B (who was in fact lying) gave a clever and evasive answer…which Character A continued to call her on…
And it was all like I was watching it happen, not like I was writing it. The characters just came alive, they became people–with their own minds and their own wills. It was entirely unexpected. And awesome!
Then of course that scene made me realize I had to go back and fix something in chapter 9. 😛 And so on. But anyway! I still call it progress, even though I am still (more or less) in chapter 12. I’m nearly to the point where I stopped and went to address all this recursive work, a few days ago. But the book is improving by leaps and bounds, every day.
I am so excited…and hoping I can keep this energy going even as I take a few days off for WorldCon. I have tomorrow at home here (and I have to pack and get ready), then I’m off to Seattle Wednesday; we fly to Chicago Thursday.
Oh where is my time machine….