So in my NaNoFeed post about not being the pope of the non-existent One True NaNo, I wrote this piece of deathless wisdom:

Some of the best mysteries are about sorting through the debris field to figure out what happened.

Which of course turns out to be the frame for this year’s novel project. We open with a bang (which you can read here) and the rest of the novel is the answer to the question “why’d she do that? how’d she do that? was he really that bad a guy?” (spoiler: he was, and then some.)

I am writing the thing out of order, pretty much bits and pieces, in the grand tradition of the novel as bundle of secret papers. Someone else’s secret papers.

Make that: someone else’s secret papers that have been blown around by a category 5 hurricane and then pushed through a wormhole. (The hurricane is metaphorical. The wormhole is not.)

I am also Not Writing. Today, in fact, I am poking through the piles of random stuff and making lists of scenes to write next. Here on out, I’m going to roll dice to see which character my protagonist shares a scene with, and make a list of all the times they meet, and picking out the most explosive ones, the ones that are going to be a ball to write.

Actually, by Not Writing (in the Strict Sense of Wordcount) I am writing in the Small Writing sense. Stuff is cooking on multiple burners in pots of dubious provenance, some of which are going to shoot gouts of flame toward the ceiling when I take off the lid.

This is called the Art of Explosition, i.e. showing things by blowing them up. I know they tell you “show don’t tell” but I am telling you “blow it up, and then let all sorts of head-scratching ensue about what the heck just happened.”

Also, this year, I have a Beloved Reader riding shotgun with me, but that’s a whole nother post.