Rewriting the Novel: I am Too Dumb To Write a Book

I got back up on the book pony yesterday. I had ignored a series of problems, and I was ready to take them on. 

Problems:

• Boring bit in which our heroine sends a telegram. I tweaked my interest by making the telegram agent more interesting. 
• Sad part in which she mourns her vanished husband. Moved an already written mourning from one spot to where I needed it.
• And finally, I had earlier taken the identical twin waitresses down to one waitress, because identical twins are a heavy-handed trope. Then I had the problem of how one waitress could cook and wait tables at the same time, and work from before sunup to after midnight. 

How? The logistics didn't work.

Raise your hand if you know.

Seriously, I pondered it ten minutes before I realized that I could go right back to my previous draft, two twins, and just make the twins not identical. Then, I could have two waitresses again with opposing personalities, instead of one very moody waitress. (Or I could keep her moody and have the other automatically adopt the opposite mood, the way I do, with no real feelings of her own. I might like that better.)

But why wouldn't that occur to me during the hour I spent boiling them down to one waitress? Or at least during one of the times I woke up and added something to my notes? Such an easy answer should have been staring at me. I do this when I'm programming too: just hammer out the first solution I think of, and then the second I'm done the obvious easy answer pops up. 

Now I'm excited again, anyway.

Comments

[KC]

Brains are weird. Focused brains are even weirder. (dreaming brains are maybe weirdest)

Hooray for successfully solving problems! Even if it takes a different attempt and a bit of time to percolate and *actually* solve the problem, it counts!

[theQueen]

KC - I love how brains reset when you pass under a threshold. I use that all the time. And I'm jealous that Gary can do that lucid dreaming thing. I mean, if I were a guy, and I could do that, well, I'd never wake up.