The world needs your words

I just wrote that in a comment to Haiku Girl, who (rasta!) is writing a children's book. But it applies to all of us, really: we, each of us, are the only ones who can tell our own story. Arthur Levine says it far better than I do.

It's inspiring, in fact, to realize that you're the only one who can tell your truth. And inspiration is just what we're after this weekend, in the home stretch of the first-ever Odious Two-Day Writer's Retreat for One.

The Retreat is still in progress; C obligingly went out and bought me lots and lots of big blank paper thingies to post on my study wall, the better to cover them with index cards of scenes in Fool Me Twice, so I can look at the plot as a meta and make sure I know, more or less, where I'm going.

Other activities that have taken place over the weekend:

• Researching forgers of historical texts
• Assessing scenes in drafts 3 & 4 to see what to keep and what to throw out
• A good deal of Solitaire, played this morning when the wireless crapped out on me
• A tasty lunch, solo, as I assessed more scenes
• An amusing interlude where C trimmed the zwergschnauzer's extremely long and ratty coat, prompting a lot of goofy feinting with the dog, who hates haircuts
• What-If: what if the other woman turned on Hunter? Betrayed him, turned him in? What if Lily were to sacrifice herself for her sister, what would that look like?
• Deep dives: Since my protagonist is a new, dumb reporter and I was once a new, dumb reporter, I went into what scared me most about being a new reporter: interviewing people; not knowing where to start or what to ask; when my editor asked me the 4 or 5 totally obvious questions that I'd forgotten to ask and I would have to call my source sometimes 2 or 3 times to get the answers. Generally speaking, cluelessness was hard in a profession where you are expected to be clueful.
  

So it's been a useful thing.