randomly randomly twitching its tail

Working on the new proposal this morning - tweaking existing words and adding new flourishes - and I'm amazed again at how things unfold between brain and page, as though my fingers know what's going on before my conscious thought can get there.

I deleted some foreshadowing, thinking that it would run better as a total surprise to both the reader and the POV character, and came to a spot three pages later where the lack of foreshadowing turned two sentences from a confirmation-of-events to a lovely little thundercrack of realization.

I know that many folk think that you're either a plotter or a pantser, that you either know where everything is going or you are writing blind-and-hopeful, but the truth for me, at least, is that a living story, like anything else, has both direction and surprise. It's the twined two together that give a story energy, coiled and sprung.


( A tiny snippet, for those interested in a work-down-the-road: )