One of the very best parts of writing a novel is being in “the deep end.” This is where the story has so consolidated itself as something real that’s happening “now,” that your every hour — waking and sleeping, both — lives the story back to front and front to back. No matter where you poke your head into the manuscript, no matter where in the story you concentrate, that moment in story time roles through your mind as if you are there observing it happen as both a participant and an observer. This is when the minute details that you might have missed while racing through the draft to get the story down make themselves “shown.” Quickly, you make note, in your dreams, in the manuscript itself, or scribbled on some scrap of paper…like the grocery list when gnoshing orange juice and crackers in the kitchen. If on the grocery list, you promptly forget you wrote it there because the act of writing it down permanently etches it in your memory. You simply forget you put there, and, back at the keyboard, insert the snip into the manuscript and let the script roll on…until the phone rings some days later, your patient spouse calling to ask what exactly you wanted at the store as referenced by ’three tips and a serrated gaping slash.’
“I figured out ‘a new serrated knife, grapes, and salsa,’ but would that be tri-tips or sirloin tips?”
Ah…no, dear. Please ignore.
Recently:
Hahaha. I think I just mentioned this kind of thing in my last comment. There you go then. We are agreed.
Oh, tsk, tsk. Can’t have that, now, can we!