March 14, 2006

Even jugglers get too many balls in the air.

I had to put aside my latest novel in favor of rewrites and synopses for the sales folks at Midnight Ink, and now I'm back on the novel. And I felt stuck. I had painted my characters into a bit of a corner, which is good, but I had to brainstorm a way out, and it wasn't going very well. So I wrote out a bunch of ideas that came to me and asked questions that needed to be answered and tried to come up with answers. Then I went to bed. In fact, before I went to bed, I said to myself, "Okay, subconscious, figure this out for me."

In the shower this morning my subconscious sent up a flare, thank god. It said, "Ditch Cindy."

Ah-ha! Cindy was, indeed, a problem. She was the main character's brother's girlfriend. (Got that?) She played a crucial role, we (all the characters and I, yes, that's as nutty as it sounds) debated having her stick around, and she stuck around.

And 50 pages later, she was at least one character too many.

So I went back and scratched out all the scenes and/or lines where she was in later.

Then I went to the gym to run on the treadmill for a half hour. (It's Michigan. Yesterday, I kid you not, it was 70 degrees. Today, it's 30 with a windchill of 17. Sometimes I hate Michigan). As I'm sweating away, I thought:

"You kept her around to keep her safe and so she couldn't be used as a lever against Joanna and her brother. You could do that now."

So I kept chugging along, then I got done and drove to a school to watch my son's Sonic Drummers do a mini-concert for the kids. Sonic Drummers are pretty cool--they play African drums. Very cool.

And as I was sitting there, I thought: "That focuses on Jo's brother, Pete. Cindy makes him vulnerable. But what makes Jo vulnerable?"

And I thought: "Aaaaahhhhhh. The bad guy uses her ex-lover as leverage, but you make the reader, at least for a time, think he's going after Cindy."

And you know what? I think everything clicked into place now. I love the creative process.

Best,
Mark Terry