I hit a point where I had to stop and think for a while in my writing today. I’m at an important scene, where the characters are emotional but also revealing for the first time the heart of the conflict between them, and I don’t want it to wind up hokey. It’s one of those times when the scene is so clear in my head that it’s not creating, more transcribing, except I’m not getting it right. And it has to be right.

So I take a break. I decide to nap for an hour. Sometimes naps are just pretend sleep, where I’m closing my eyes in order to better imagine my world and sometimes they become real sleep, but either way, it’s a Sunday afternoon and I need a chance to think a little.

Think a little about Natalya, that is.

Somehow I wound up, half imagining, half dreaming, Grace and Rachel. What are they doing in Seattle? How do they know each other? Did they even meet when Rachel was in Tassamara? Grace wasn’t at the diner that night. And wait, shouldn’t Rachel be in San Francisco with her mother?

But no, they’re walking along a waterfront in Seattle. It’s not Pike’s Place market, but it’s someplace I know. There’s maybe a fish hatchery? A canal? I know it’s familiar. The grass slopes down to a sidewalk and there’s concrete and people and they’re talking. Poor Rachel. She wanted a fresh start, but her D.C. neat perfection is an awkward fit in Seattle. Her clothes are wrong, her style is wrong. And she’s at a school with boys, which is completely scary and strange. No one’s mean to her, but it’s like she’s invisible. She might as well not exist. She can’t ask her mom for help because she begged to go to public school. She can’t tell her mom how unhappy she really is.

Oh, I just realized. Dillon sent Grace.

Huh. I wonder how?

I wonder why?

And mostly, I really, really wonder how Rachel and Grace wound up being the story in my head when I’m supposed to be thinking about Natalya and Colin?!

(Grace, incidentally, decides that they need to pick the girl whose style Rachel most likes and hire her. Not as a friend, because that would be awkward and creepy, but as a style consultant. Shopping ensues. I think Grace likes shopping. I have never shopped at anything other than a thrift store in Seattle in my life, so it just might be that Rachel’s style consultant/future friend is a thrift store kind of shopper. That would sure be a change for Rachel.)

But what the heck are they doing in Seattle?

An hour past the end of my scheduled nap time, so it’s time to get back to Nat and Colin. Or maybe start thinking about dinner. But it occurs to me that writing a story set in Seattle makes visiting Seattle a tax deduction, as long as I do some research.

Why Grace, though? Why not Akira? Well, no, she’d be useless. She’s not good at making friends herself and she doesn’t care about clothes much. And Sylvie…yep, equally useless. My subconscious got it right.

I could make lots of excuses for why I disappeared for the month of October — I actually have a few good reasons, including a couple of fun projects that took up some brain space and writing energy. I’m working on a presentation about self-publishing for my dad’s computer club, which ought to be fun if I can pull all my thoughts together. I’m also editing and formatting my son’s paternal grandfather’s memoirs, which I thought would be a little project, but requires some serious thinking in order to respect his voice and story while still making sensible edits.

And I started some Doctor Who fanfiction, which has been fun but gives me an excuse for lots of research. Bacon cost 38 cents per pound in 1938, which sounds faked, because of the 38-38 repetition, but was actually from a site about prices in 1938. I spent quite a while wavering over whether a made-up price — 39 cents? 37 cents? 42 cents? — would sound more realistic than the real price. Plus, of course, the research into Doctor Who itself, which means watching episodes — where was River in prison? When was River in prison? (Stormcage, 51st century). Who arrested her? Back to the television!

And, of course, I’m still struggling with rewriting A Gift of Time. I’ve done the first chapter so many times now, so many different ways. My new plan is to NaNoWriMo it — just write, write, write, get the idea down, and move on. I did this analysis of my current writing process with a friend today:

Line: Half the town filled Maggie’s place.
Thought: That’s terrible. Well, rewrite it. Get the idea across in a better way.
Line: Maggie’s place was packed.
Thought: Is that passive? Is it dull? Sentences with “was” are boring. I should change that.
Line: Half the town packed into Maggie’s place.
Thought: Okay, that’s just stupid. You’re talking about people, not the town. A town can’t fit into a restaurant.
Line: People packed Maggie’s place.
Thought: Ugh, that alliteration is like bad poetry. And could ‘people’ possibly be a duller word choice?

And twenty minutes later, I have accomplished nothing. And all I wanted to do was to say that the darn restaurant was crowded!

Mostly, though, my disappearance has been due to none of that. Actually, I’ve been living in Azeroth. If you’ve ever played WoW, the Pandaria expansion is really fun. It combines so many good qualities of play and story, humor and tension and excitement and gratification. The makers have put serious work into finding out what makes a game fun and satisfying and trying to build in aspects of the game that will make it enjoyable for everyone. The only problem, of course, is that in order to get to Panda-land, you’ve got to work your characters through all of the other levels. Huge, huge time sink. I suppose when we’re starving because I haven’t found a job (<–hyperbole, highly unlikely to happen) I will regret the hours spent immersed in someone else’s imaginary worlds, but honestly, I’ve really enjoyed this past month there.

That said, I’m going to try to cut way back in November in order to spend more time in my own imaginary worlds. And I’ll be giving the 50,000 words in a month thing a try. I probably won’t do the official NaNoWriMo, because I want to work on Time, of course, and since I’ve been working on it for, ulp, three or four months already, it doesn’t fit within their rules. But in principle, I’ll be trying the crazy writing schedule for a month. Anyone else doing the same?

PS The number on the Halloween candy is because it’s for a scavenger hunt for Project Team Beta. Welcome, Project Team Beta folks! Good luck with the hunt! And Happy Halloween!

PPS A Gift of Ghosts and A Gift of Thought are both free on Amazon on October 31, from midnight to midnight Pacific Standard Time. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably read them already, but if you have friends who might like a free ghost story or two on Halloween, please spread the word!