Strange Things That (Only) Happen To Novelists

I have a strong connection to my WIP. Some might say it’s an unnatural connection. You be the judge.

As committed as I am to launching Left to Chance, and as devoted as I am to Teddi Lerner and her love square (not a triangle! a square!) there is just something about South Haven, Michigan and Boop Peck that has captured my heart and my imagination more so than ever before. That doesn’t mean it’s been easy. I’m trudging through a chapter now and can’t quite settle on the players or the events. Yes, I’ve worked the Story Genius method with scene cards. Yes, I’ve outlined. Yes, I’ve brainstormed. I just keep changing my mind as to what works.

But today I sitting on my new comfy couch with my laptop, determined to polish ONE SCENE. Not a chapter. A scene. Hell, I’ll settle for a polished paragraph. I’m not even finished yet, it’s 7:30pm, and I’m getting a hunger headache, but I’m not stopping until that one scene is sparkly, at least for the moment. (Edited to add: I stopped mid-blog-post and had a veggie burger. With cheese. Headache averted.)

Part of that scene is a short paragraph, just a few lines, of a flashback for eighty-four-year-old Boop. She’s planning to bake what she calls a “talking cake” for her granddaughter, Hannah. (A cake made so that she can have a serious talk with her granddaughter.) This day, Boop’s going to make her own version of her grandmother’s lemon blueberry cake. South Haven is famous for its blueberry farms, and Boop remembers some important details of a long ago summer day of picking blueberries with her first love. It’s a lovely flashback if I do say so myself. I wrote it and was satiated. It was sweet and meaningful in the past and in the present story.

Within a moment of finishing the passage, I rose from the sofa to get a drink, opened the fridge, and these spilled out. I just stared. For about twenty seconds. I just stared.

Coincidence? Cosmic forces?

I’m going with the latter, at least for now.

What weird things have happened to you while you were writing fiction? This is only one of a few that go along with writing The Last Bathing Beauty. But there’s plenty of time for more stories.

And maybe it was just the universe telling me to wrap things up with Boop and get on with the posts about Left To Chance. It’s eighty days until book launch. Not that I’m counting.