Niggles

Today I'm piggybacking on a post over at the Crowe's Nest (agent Sara Crowe's client blog) by Alexa Martin called The Annoying Niggle. You see, I experienced the Annoying Niggle last night. (Actually I've been experiencing it for days, but I didn't know what the problem was until last night.) Something was wrong with my new book, and it was niggling (probably not the correct use of that word, but go with me here) at me something fierce.

After writing about a thousand words, and loving where the story is headed, I went outside for some quality thinking time (i.e. a smoke - which is when my best thinking gets done), and the Annoying Niggle jumped out at me. It slapped me around for a while until I saw what the problem was.

An unopened box would never be allowed into the evidence locker at any police station. How stupid would that be? Really.

Umm, duh. But I'd already done it. And the damn box has to remained unopened or a whole shitload of mayhem would ensue - too early in the novel.

I finished my smoke, and promptly came in here to work my way through the problem. I opened a new file and did a little free writing. (Basically me talking to myself in print.) After about a page of that, I hit on the way to solve my problem. Of course, the solution is going to require a near rewrite of about 15K words, but if I don't do it, that whole chunk - no matter how much I like it - is going to wind up sucking. I can write it better, stronger, more coherent! Yeah. That's the ticket.

Anyway, before I can move forward, I have to fix this.

Every have a time when the niggles snuck up on you? Alexa's right, they really can be like sneaky kitties sometimes. Annoying, pushy, but ultimately loveable, sneaky kitties.