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Tuesday, November 27, 2012

The Muse and Her Sense Of Humor

The day after Thanksgiving, I finished a proposal and sent it off to my agent. This meant I had two and a half days to work on something else and there is this trilogy idea that's next in line. All I needed was some kind of over-arcing story for the series.

Um, yeah. Unfortunately, this is an idea I've had for more than two years, but I still haven't managed to figure out the series arc. Of course, that's because it's never been first in line. Now that it is, I should figure everything out and be able to get some work in. That's not exactly what happened. My poor writing buddies were subjected to many think out loud emails. They offered feedback, helped me brainstorm, but nothing really gelled.
It was extremely frustrating.

Then this morning as I was driving into work, pieces started falling into place. The first chip to fall was on hero and heroine number one. I wondered if they'd known each other previously, and if so, what was their relationship. Somehow getting the answer to the first of the two questions seemed to help me drop the entire series arc into place. I don't know why knowing this one thing made the difference, but it did and I wasn't going to question it too closely. I'm going with the assumption that my subconscious was working on it and when I thought about some of the characters, it brought the solution into my head.

And yes, I am excited to have the potential answer. I have to mull some more before I know for sure it's the right arc. But it was frustrating as well. Couldn't my subconscious have shaken out the information while I was home from work for the long weekend? That would have given me two days to fill in blanks and turn things over. I think I heard my muse laughing as I drove down the highway.