(Tangent: new character alert, which means you should probably expect a new character interview in the next few days.)

(Second tangent: I once tried writing in linear fashion, beginning to end, but I just can’t do it — too many things pop into my head and need to get written; different scenes generate higher energy levels on different days, and while it’s all still forming I think it’s important to let the scene that’s screaming the loudest have the pen for the day.)

Anyway, the neat thing that happened today was that, for the very first time, I saw a scene from the third book.  The last book in the first part of the story; the end of the beginning, and I just saw how it ends.

It was awesome.

I have no idea if I can write it so it’s as awesome as I saw it, but when I saw it while I was sitting on the bus, stunned and watching it in my head as though it had been cast, filmed, produced and projected directly into my skull, I knew that’s how it had to go.  Because it was so totally awesome.

I’m excited because while the end of the overall story doesn’t come with the third book — this is a story of three threes, for reasons that become immensely clear — still, it represents a serious hard stop; the world changes viciously, violently and irrevocably at the end of the third book, and it’s a big enough leap, barrier, shift or evolution that it may almost feel like a new story when the second three kick in.  Anyway, while I always knew where things were heading, and what in general had to happen, the specifics were veiled to me.

Well, not after today they’re not.

Anyway, I love it when I see new pieces to the puzzle like that.  I know it’s going well when the scenes are revealed to me so clearly that all I have to do is sit my ass down and write as fast and as hard as I can before I forget what I just saw.  The psychotic break does all the hard creative work for me; all I have to do is take notes.

So while I’m not going to give in to the temptation of writing more of the third book, it really gives me another really cool thing to shoot for, you know?

Love this writing thing.

There is, of course, an excellent reason for me not having mentioned The Grey God before, and that’s because, well, I haven’t really thought much about it yet.  Oh, sure, I knew it was the end of the first big story arc, and it was going to be awesome and have armies and fights and climaxes and heroes and villains and dark evil wicked cool things in it, and I even wrote one scene of it as a prologue to the first book that I’ll probably leave out, but aside from that it was a bit… oh, amorphous, I suppose.

Anyway, I had a one-page synopsis already written for The Grey Lord, and it wasn’t even all that bad, so I sent that along quickly with a modicum of spit and polish (light on the spit).  I was delighted to discover, as I went through my files, that I had also dutifully written a one-page synopsis for The Grey God at around the same time as I’d written the one for TGL.  Eager to send it along, I popped it open to see what I’d come up with, and immediately saw that it was Cack.

The reason it was Cack, of course, has something to do with not having thought much about it yet.  I’d even go as far as to say that it had a Lot to do with it.  Quite a lot, in fact.

So that’s what I’ve done, from mid-afternoon until, well, about twenty minutes ago: I’ve thought long and hard about The Grey God, and ultimately come up with some stuff I really like.  New places to go, new things to see, new research to do and, most importantly, some great conflicts to mark the end of this particular cycle in the story.  Hopefully, I’ve also come up with a one-page synopsis that is not only Not Cack, but is also a reasonably good representation of where I want to take the story and how I intend to get there.

So that was my day, which was awesome, providing yet more circumstantial evidence that I really do enjoy this writing thing.

As for the reasons I’ve been away for a bit, I’ll cover that in a later post.  Not quite ready to talk about that other stuff yet, because I’m superstitious, but I’ll get around to it.