This looks hard, so I'll be lazy instead.

I had one of those shining moments of clarity about plot this weekend. It wasn't about how to actually FIX my plot, oh no. That would have been useful. Instead, it was realizing how deeply flawed my writing technique is. ^_^

Those of you who've been masochistic enough to read an entire story of mine know that I have a tendency to get distracted from my central storyline. To the point that some readers have had to ask me what the central storyline actually was... I try, I really do! I just decide that i have to Explain why people do things, and then I get distracted by freedom fighters. Or libraries. Or bagpipes. Or tattoos. Or hair colour. A hundred thousand words or so later, I return triumphantly from my pointless excursions, and wrap up the plot in ten thousand words written in a day because I'm so exiling tired of the book.

The voices (Burnout, Muse and Inner Editor) in my head pointed this out to me on the weekend.

And I went hehehehe. Oops. But that's like real life, right?

They stared at me and said Noooo, that's not the point. Real life is boring and aggravating. This is A Bad Thing you are doing. Fix it. Make your shiny distracting storylines count, or cut them out.

I coughed and refused to make eye contact. But that sounds hard!

They made comments which I can't repeat, but they amounted to "Suck it up, Buttercup."

So that was my weekend, story-wise. And say, has anyone else noticed how HARD it is to lead up to a conclusion for eighty or one hundred twenty thousand words, making everything count? I fear writing now... But in other news, I finally managed to figure out how to rob the bank. ^_^ Silly small town, leaving their deputy codes lying around...