Drip, drip, drip..ker-FLOOD!

It's pouring outside. It's been pouring for the last 24 hours. Every now and again, the rain stops and the air just sort of mists, almost like it's catching its breath for another round of rain. And then the sky opens up and it all comes flooding down again.

As far as I know, it's supposed to keep raining until sometime in 2008.

I'm kind of out of it, partly because I lounged in bed this morning, listening to the rain and trying to meditate on my story. I need to write two scenes, scenes that introduce two more characters, and since I haven't got the least clue what these characters' arcs are, I got nuthin' on either of them.

Sigh.

This is one of those things that makes writing fiction so maddening. You get absolutely, positively, pig-headedly convinced you need to do something, but you don't know why you need to do it, and you really don't know how to do it. (Why often leads to how, I've found.)

So you think, I won't do it then. I won't add those characters.

Very nice and rational. Except the pig-headed thing kicks in and you absolutely balk at cutting the characters, or changing the locale of the scene, or whatever it is that's giving you fits.

Okay, maybe this doesn't happen to you. But it happens to me. A lot.

It's part of what makes my process as slow as cold molasses. Sure, I could just scribble whatever, but I'd end up deleting it all. On top of that, sometimes doing that just muddies the waters, muddling me. It's kind of like knitting: you should be knitting but you're not ready, so you purl instead. Then, when you're ready to knit, you have to unravel all the purling before you can start.

I need some popcorn. And a movie.

And an idea...