Saturday's hijinks

I got an early start today, too, because I have a meeting around noon and after that I need to do an issue of The Secrets newsletter. This one will be titled When good enough isn’t good enough.

On the book I got Chapter Fifteen written. This morning, over coffee, I figured out what I wanted in this chapter and found a way to bridge between the two of them. It’s all cool, it’s character work for the most part, but it didn’t really move the whole story forward. There’s an underlying mystery here. While I was developing the tools that will enable my hero to solve the mystery, I wasn’t pushing the mystery forward. What that means, ultimately, is that if this chapter got lost somehow, no one would notice it was missing.

And if you couldn’t notice it was missing, then why is it there in the first place?

That sort of question sits in the back of my mind when I’m writing and, thank goodness, usually produces something cool. So it was today. I got through the material I wanted to cover, jotted some notes to bridge to future things, and then needed that hook to pull the chapter back into the mainline. Hook’s the wrong word, actually, it’s more of a suture to stitch it in tight.

And I found it. Serendipitous and inspired by, of all things, stories about the Viet Nam Memorial in DC. Two types of stories there—names that aren’t all the wall and, more surprising, names that are on the wall which are discovered by the guys who are supposed to be dead. That’s got to be a shocker for you. I just kind of switched that around for my kicker, which is enough to remind readers that something weird is going on and is just waiting to be discovered.

I know, I know, cryptic remarks and teasers, but such is life. And, who knows? What seems like pure genius now might be crap later, or not fit at all.

Still, it’s fun when it works.