"All the right friends, in all the right places, so yeah, we're going down."

It's entirely possible that you've seen this already on Bahnree's blog, since we share most of our readership. ^_^ But I have to share it anyhow.

Is it not PRETTY? And doesn't the lead singer look like Wash? Admit it, he totally does. *takes a moment to heart Wash*

And I need a masked ball with electric organ in my book. NOW. I DEMAND masked ball. With spies and pick pockets and glowing instrumentation, and possibly assassination/assignation. I am not sure how this all works out, but it's finally unstuck the damned block in my plot.

I think I've decided moral ambiguity is lame, and the bad guys are bad. Probably. Or maybe this will show that my good guys are the bad guys. IS COMPLICATED. Anyhow, there are masks and reveals and begging, so it's all better now.

If you've read the above ranting, I salute you. You clearly need some serious therapy. Watch the pretty video again, you'll feel better. There are dancers!

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...

"Soon I'll be out of my mind, and you'll be out of ideas..."

So I was going to dance class today, thinking about plastic. What, you mean you don't do that? Surely you jest! You lie! *cough* But here's the thing. I'm doing a steampunk world in Karma Police, and there's a floating town in the ocean. (Which makes me happy inside, btw.) And because I'm just like that, I need to know why it's there, and how it's there. My first thought was, of course, plastic floats! Then I went, uh, wait just one second here, plastic? In steampunk? That doesn't really sound right, not for the amounts I'd need to float a town...

I will spare the the rest of the stream-of-conciousness wherein I thought about rivets and Kipling, Star Trek, gears, the American Civil War, greasing methods and child labour and submarines and Kipling again and mining and ice caps and fishing and- I'm telling you about it. Anyhow, wow, I love my little town, and I can almost smell it, I know how it works so well. While thinking about this, I realized that the piece of tech that I'm starting out Karma Police with, does not jive with the rest of the story. (If you're read it, you know what I mean when I say "Harbour Tree." If you haven't read it, I'm sorry you missed the benefits of my insanity.) It was semi-organic, and everything else I'm writing is mechanically minded.

This made me sad, because I loved that harbour tree. HOWEVER, before I became too broken-hearted, I realized it actually belongs in my Medusa/Fire/Fantasy/SF/Pick One/War/Children/blindness/SO MUCH SHINY story that keeps hovering behind my head dropping maddening hints. So I squeed over that revelation and nearly walked into the barre at dance. I had everything plot-wise figured out and it was wonderful!

This lasted about ten minutes, till we were talking about costumes. This was when I realized that my plot order for Karma Police is all backwards and knotted, and I narrowly kept from beating my head off the floor.

You see, my plan was to start writing with a big event, throw in some flashbacks to explain why they were there, have a big realization, and then End triumphantly at 50,001 words. That- did not work. I'm currently halfway through the flashbacks, and halfway through the strange little plotlines that insisted on appearing between the Big Event and the Big Realization. One of those is the floating town, actually. *takes a moment to love floating town* My realization was that my story actually is in three parts.

1. The flashbacks.
2. The Big Event and the cunning plotlines.
3. The Big Realization and outfall.

Also, the cunning plotlines are supposed to help with the Big Realization, and I need to research metal working, specifically Ship Building, Zeppelin Design, Hydrogen safety, turn of the century Prisons, Rebellions and Guerilla Warfare, Class Structure, High Schools, Bank Security, Catholic rites for the almost-dead, oh, and gas mining. That's what I know about now, more will undoubtedly come later.

Remind me again why I ever thought that writing fantasy would be easier than "real world?"

Anyhow. As riveting as I'm sure you found that, I actually have a question for you, my lovely readers! (I know you're out there, I check my stats occasionally, and some of you even comment. Shocking, I know.) Here it is.

Should I go back now and write out the flashbacks that have revealed themselves to be Part 1, or should I fight on to the end before re-writing?

Part of my brain is saying Never Go Back!!! Resist the urge to edit! Resist! RESIST!!!!!

And part of my brain is saying Wait, you don't even know why your characters are doing things! Go back, figure out what you're exiling doing, THEN continue.

I'm not sure which plan is better, so there is the question of the hour.

What do YOU think?