Needed: Less Faith in an Unfaithful Brain

For a long time now, I’ve entertained friends as I cleaned by reading cryptic bits of found notes, then trying to figure out what the hell I meant. Why did I write “flux capacitor” while working on a contemporary romance? Some are mundane. “Like Shari’s, only inside.” Who is Shari, and what is like her what only inside? Others are more…exotic. “Unholy Vegetarian Rangers.” “Wishful thinking–were-lizard.” “Super-power: always a virgin.”

…yeah.

It’s one of those weaknesses I watch for in my writing. Once I let a work rest a while, when I come back I can see that scenes are not nearly as well-drawn as I remember them being. That’s the reason for letting things sit–so I can see their faults and then fix them.

With stuff written just for me, though, I’m less likely to fix. I’ll remember, I foolishly think. Like the way I’ll remember what that password hint means and not spend twenty minutes trying to figure out what “done2death” was supposed to hint at because that’s FOR CERTAIN not the actual password.

The other day I was stuck with not much to do and not much brain to do it with. I wandered over my blog for a while, just reading and reminiscing, and discovered a recurring problem. Sometimes I’m blogging about “this character is making me laugh” and it’s annoying as hell because I didn’t even tag the entry, so I can’t even hazard a guess who I was talking about. Even worse, though? This lovely haunting scene that I talk about right here. I have no idea what that scene WAS. I can’t find notes on it anywhere.

So, yeah. Often I’m deliberately vague on the blog because I don’t want to spoil people for the books. But now it’s driving me wild that I can’t recall or find that scene anywhere. So another way I need to find balance–find the happy medium where I give enough hints to intrigue, but not enough for you guys to figure it out, while posting enough that years later I can figure it out.

I’m sure that’s going to go well. >.<