Blowing through this book.

23,500 words in three days.

But yesterday I definitely hit a wall in the afternoon. Wracked my brains for another story thread but nothing came. Lay down and napped three or four times, wandered around asking myself questions, went to sleep last night puzzling over it, hoping to prime some dreams.

The story started off so fast and breezy that it's a little alarming for it to screech to a halt.

Part of it is that the further into a story, the more the needs of a plot dictate what you write. You can't just go off half-cocked and see where it leads as much.

But today I'm going to try to recapture the tone and not worry so much about the plot. The tone basically comes from the characters, so I just need them to lead the way. But I don't want to force it. It needs to be inspired. If I have to wait a couple of days, so be it.

Later:

Took and shower and Bamm! The ideas started flowing. There's a moment when something just "clicks," when you know you've got it.

It's a mystery.

So the next section of the book is pretty much figured out.

From the beginning premise, I more or less set up five Herculean tasks for the hero, but I've already blown through four out of the five and I'm only a third of the way through the book. I was going to pull a little trick and have the last task fragmented into another five tasks, and I'll probably still do that, but the next section is a bit of a detour. An interesting detour, hopefully, that brings in the larger theme of the novel so that it will have sufficient impact at the end.

But most importantly, I'm looking forward to writing it, that inner excitement to signals a fruitful writing session.