Going Off Road – The Good, The Bad, The Really, Really Ugly

If I ever have to sell on proposal I will be in deep do-do. It’s no secret I can’t write a suckopsis to save my life. Wait. Correction. I can write a suckopsis prior to writing the book, though the book will end up being nothing like the suckopsis. Which, my pubbed friends tell me, is really no big deal.

(Maybe I’m doing things right after all???)

The-book-that-will-never-end has taken a strange twist. I ended up writing a scene the other night that went in the opposite direction I’d planned. (Bye, bye suckopsis.) I’m always amazed when this happens. It’s like my brain automatically knows what has to happen, even though I’m trying to force the book to go in a different direction. When I finished the scene, I immediately thought, what the heck did I just do? Then I stepped back, let it sink in and realized, Wow. That was so cool. How the heck did I just do that? And voila! just like that I knew how the book was going to end. Not anywhere near where I’d thought it would end (in plot OR location).

So now I have hope that the-book-that-will-never-end might just have an ending after all. I’d hoped to have it done by Nationals. Probably won’t happen. But I’m going to be very, very close (not counting rewrites and edits, and oh, my God, all those threads I have to fix).

Have you ever had this happen? Have a scene totally pop out that you didn’t plan and send your book in a different (better) direction?