Plot unknotted

Well thank goodness for that.  I had a night’s sleep and then a little bike ride to clear my head, and lo and behold a solution came to me.  I’m not sure whether the solution – or indeed the knot that led to it – will stay in the final version, as that will depend on later editing, but at least it has got me out of the corner that I painted myself into.  And it’s quite a nice solution too, requiring some reading and research – always my favourite part of the process, and any excuse, etc.

Buoyed by my success, I motored on through the words yesterday and managed 2,475.  And today I woke very early and was on a roll – 2,061 words – and so now I have time for the ironing.  (If anyone ever tells you that life as an author is not glamorous, don’t believe them.  Not only ironing, but also clearing expired food from the back of the larder.  Just like JK Rowling’s Sunday, I should imagine.)  And looking at my overall chapter plan for “Plank 3”, I see that I have only three blank chapters left, with thirty-nine written.  Each chapter is basically an incident; as the book is written from the point of view of a policeman, it concentrates on action and incident rather than description or emotion.  Again, who knows whether that chapter breakdown will remain, but the end is very much in sight: once I’ve written those three blank chapters, I’ll have done the first run-through of the entire book.  Day off tomorrow (meeting godmother in London, while checking out a couple of Plank locations), then back with renewed vigour and determination on Tuesday.