The Writing Life: progress and surprises

Yesterday and today's work on the new new book (the one in first draft, not the one in production) produced surprises for the writer, briefly discussed on the Paksworld blog.

Yesterday felt like a very pedestrian, chop-your-way-through-the-wordage day (being interrupted by a power outage and some other stuff) but today I can see what it was preparing for...the surprise.  

The surprise sets up a number of story-branches...the question being, which one is "live?"  In this story universe, it could b