When Cometh Insight?

Not always when you want it to. The earlier the better, but sometimes you just have to spend time with a project before it's comfortable enough with you to open up fully. I will always take having a new insight into a story or character over not, don't get me wrong, but when it happens late in the process it's kind of a bummer. Why?

Two reasons:

One, you have to pull on a lot more threads to integrate the new thing cleanly, and be much more careful about what you yank on. Depending on where in the story the it belongs, it can also involve redoing a lot of work that was basically done already. Like painting a room only to realize it doesn't match the couch until you've already moved it back in.

Two is entirely ego. You just feel stupid missing something so obvious for so long. "How did I get so much done without realizing this!?" It's genuinely an 'I will never tell anyone which part I'm talking about,' bang-your-head-against-the-wall feeling when you realize something profound in the third draft that should have come at the outlining stage.

I'm not mentioning this for any particular reason whatsoever, just as a hypothetical 'we all have those days' commiseration with anyone this has happened to. Because it certainly didn't happen to me.

No, the new book is much better than it was this time last week for completely unrelated, much less ego-bruising reasons entirely. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a couch to move.