After one of the laziest summers I can recall, the beginning of the academic year is upon me, and all of a sudden there’s so much stress in my life that I find myself watching CNN for relaxation. In addition to teaching and advising, part of my job involves cleaning up messes when an instructor quits or we have to cancel a class, and this being peak season for that sort of thing, the office is a bit on edge. I can count 10 things I MUST DO ASAP, and yet I find myself distracted by the urge to work on my novel, instead—something I was supposed to do during these past quiet months of summer. Unlike most of the authors here at Pandamoon, I have a terrible work ethic.
Oh, I made a lot of decisions about the book, and I did some planning, but I did not get many words on the page. In spirit, I’m a seat-of-the-pants writer, but in order to create coherent, complex plots I’ve had to retrain myself in the art of outlining. Outlining is a mystery writer’s best friend, but the profound drawback of outlining is that it lets the steam out of “discovery.” I need to be excited about the work to write exciting scenes. I also need extra pressure to truly focus and produce.
That pressure came last week, from work. The excitement came this week, from an unexpected find. In the corner of my whiteboard (which I hadn’t had the guts to look at directly since June) was this little note:
RT’s secret? I honestly don’t remember writing that, and I certainly don’t remember what the secret is. And did I ever know, or did I just recognize that a secret was needed? Either way, I couldn’t be happier. It’s as if an elf came at night and scribbled a prompt on the board.
An elf? Uh oh. Maybe the Plot Dobby is real.