Leap Day Inspiration

The perfect ending for the secondary plot in my work in progress (WIP) evaded me for years. (Yes, years.) This morning, inspiration hit.

I was doing a mundane chore – going through my email – as I thought about conflict driving a story’s action. The primary plot has loads of conflict driving the middle, but the secondary plot pales in comparison.

I know the secondary plot’s motivation, how and why it intersects with the primary plot, and how the protagonist reacts to it, but I couldn’t find a believable scenario that flowed into and synchronized with the ending.

Now I have that ending, and I can tune the secondary plot to support it. What a feeling of success and satisfaction.

I hope I don’t have to wait four years for the next bolt of inspiration.

 

Deadlines

Meet Daisy, the project’s mascot

My father always said he loved the sound of deadlines whooshing by. And who can blame him – unless the deadlines are taken seriously.

(I just felt my publisher cringe.)

I took a break last month from blogging and ‘intending’ to edit the draft of my long overdue detective mystery. If my publisher assumed I was merely procrastinating, she would’ve been partially correct.

But we did meet for tea and have several business chats regarding plans to publish a children’s book this summer before the fall Omnifete event. This afternoon I hired an illustrator. The project is taking off.

A plan and a deadline. Gulp.