this is how it happens
Jan. 9th, 2005 10:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennySo, back when I was doing the slash and burn through Mélusine to lose 15k, my editor suggested that there was a particular scene near the end of the book that didn't seem to be doing much, and maybe it could go? And I said, No, it has to stay in (and where it is, since her other suggestion was to move it into Kekropia--where, honestly, it would not have fit). It's important.
But I didn't know why.
Last night, I figured it out.
I finished reading through the nine extant chapters of Kekropia yesterday afternoon, and last night was sitting with notebook and Phileas, trying to figure out how to start Chapter 10, which I do by writing dow the things that need to happen, and then trying different ways of combining them to make them happen plausibly. And I wrote, What they need is to figure out the application of [thematic thingamabob] to and my brain finished the sentence, the current situation, and ka-pow! The circuit closed, the lights came on, and I knew why I had had to leave the scene in Mélusine in and why it was important, and what it was for. Now, mind you, the thing it's for is something I didn't know about when I was writing Mélusine or when I was editing Mélusine, or in fact until I'd started writing Chapter 9 of Kekropia. But this scene that I wrote without knowing why I needed it solves three or four different problems at once, including one that actually belongs to the third book. And it ties a whole bunch of thematic things together in a way that makes it look like I knew what I was doing all the time.
I am torn between amazed delight at my own cleverness and the sort of primitive fear that leads to volcano worship and cargo cults.
But I didn't know why.
Last night, I figured it out.
I finished reading through the nine extant chapters of Kekropia yesterday afternoon, and last night was sitting with notebook and Phileas, trying to figure out how to start Chapter 10, which I do by writing dow the things that need to happen, and then trying different ways of combining them to make them happen plausibly. And I wrote, What they need is to figure out the application of [thematic thingamabob] to and my brain finished the sentence, the current situation, and ka-pow! The circuit closed, the lights came on, and I knew why I had had to leave the scene in Mélusine in and why it was important, and what it was for. Now, mind you, the thing it's for is something I didn't know about when I was writing Mélusine or when I was editing Mélusine, or in fact until I'd started writing Chapter 9 of Kekropia. But this scene that I wrote without knowing why I needed it solves three or four different problems at once, including one that actually belongs to the third book. And it ties a whole bunch of thematic things together in a way that makes it look like I knew what I was doing all the time.
I am torn between amazed delight at my own cleverness and the sort of primitive fear that leads to volcano worship and cargo cults.
