One of my mother\u2019s favorite aphorisms was this: A wise man changes his mind. A fool never does.<\/p>\n
This week\u2019s blog deals with mind changing, including a bit of literary history.<\/p>\n
Decades ago, when I was working on Beaumont #9, Payment in Kind<\/em>, the story ground to a halt part way in\u2014at Chapter 11\u2014and wouldn\u2019t budge.<\/p>\n At the time, I was both a writer and a soccer mom. Shortly after the writing stalled out, I went to soccer practice where I sat down next to another soccer mom, a woman named Vicki. She asked me how I was doing. \u201cI\u2019m really struggling with Chapter 11,\u201d I told her. \u201cOh, my,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m so sorry. I had no idea you were having financial difficulties.\u201d<\/p>\n Once I assured her it was a writing problem as opposed to a financial one, she became an instant fan. Soon after that encounter, she and her family moved to Oklahoma, and I lost track of her, but that incident popped back into my head just this week.<\/p>\n It turns out that changing one’s mind the most difficult task any writer can face, but shortly after that talking with Vicki, I managed to do just that. I realized that the person I thought was the killer just didn\u2019t have the gumption to do it, so I had to look around my cast of characters to find out who the real culprit was. In the end, the answer to the problem was just that simple.<\/p>\n This week I faced a similar issue. Smoke and Mirror<\/em>s stalled out, but in Chapter 17 rather than Chapter 11. When a book stops cold for some reason or other, I usually spend several sleepless nights, tossing and turning and trying to come to terms with the issue. For a time it looked as though things were bad enough that I might have to abandon the plot line that was the origin of the book\u2019s title.<\/p>\n Then, two days ago, after getting Bill settled for the night, I was walking down the hall when the answer lightbulb lit up in my head. It turns out that a character I had always assumed was a bad guy turned out to be a good guy after all. And that\u2019s all I needed to do in order to fix the book and get it moving again\u2014I had to change my mind.<\/p>\n So here\u2019s a Mother’s Day thank you to Evie Busk. She just managed to save my bacon one more time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of my mother\u2019s favorite aphorisms was this: A wise man changes his mind. A fool never does. This week\u2019s blog deals with mind changing, including a bit of literary history. Decades ago, when I was working on Beaumont #9, Payment in Kind, the story ground to a halt part way in\u2014at Chapter 11\u2014and wouldn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t