Well! That little piece of The Witch Box that I woke up with today turned out to be a big piece.
Let me see if I can explain this to you. If you’re thinking of writing a novel of your own someday, you might find this interesting. Maybe even useful.
I had reached a point in the story where I was, in a word, stuck. Ahead of me lay unknown territory which I would have to cross to get to the double climax of the plot. How much territory, I had no idea. I didn’t want to pad the story (heaven forbid!), but I didn’t want to wind up with a short book, either.
And then, as I sat down to write this morning, the skies, as it were, opened.
I interrupted the ordinary writing of the story to jump ahead to a point just before the climax–and suddenly I had a nice big chunk of plot! I had an incident that shed light on everything that had to come next. A piece of the story that had to be told. So now I’m telling it.
The idea is to write this all up and then work backward to reach that point at which I’d interrupted the chronological flow of the story. In fact, I could then also work forward from that point, until the two plot streams met somewhere in the middle and joined into one.
I’ve never done this before, but it’s an exciting challenge, artistically. Sort of like solving a hard jigsaw puzzle by stopping work on one section and starting on another; and if I can bring those two sections together, I’ll have most of the puzzle finished.
I can only pray it works. But I’ve learned over the years to trust those bolts that come out of the blue: because I think they come from God.