Middles

I'm not really in the middle of The Masque. I'm still threading cool things into the chapters and introducing the reader to a lot. I'm in the beginning. I'm very happy. But I'm definitely in another middle of my HD revisions. And that's why I'm frozen. That's why I was surfing the net and found this instead of writing something. I was reading that and thinking about HD. I think I'm going to go home tonight and look over the outline I put together for that book way back in Fall 2001 or so (maybe it was Spring 2002). Reading Holly's accounting of her middle troubles reminding me of mine. As I really immersed myself in HD, I realized that my book was going nowhere. I need something more. So Mike, my #1 Bad Guy, wanders into the story and mucks around in the plot. Denise suddenly decides that she isn't going to die at the beginning of Part 2 like I originally thought she would, thus taking the focus of the story away from Margie and Aidan, where it was supposed to be. Life gets really complicated for Aidan because not only is his mother still hanging around, but it turns out Mike is really his father, not Darren (long story, see Part 1). Plot gets mucked further. As I pushed my way through the revisions of Part 2's middle, guess what? Eugene decides that he's not going to die like I told him we would at the end of Part 2. I compromised with Eugene and informed him that he would live, but he would be mute and deaf. He agreed, but then when I wrote his very first scene in Part 3, the bastard starts talking and listening to someone else talk. I actually didn't even realize what had happened until I had finished the scene. That, and Denise tells me that she's going to unravel a different scientific quandry in Part 3 and ignore the one I originally had her working on.

Maybe I'll quit The Masque and leave it forever stuck in the beginning. I shudder to think what Deb's going to do once I get to the middle. And Baxter might blow up Mars and rocket everybody to Alpha Centauri if I'm not careful.