So am I going to pretend I didn’t completely forget it was Wednesday? Oh, hell no.

Or rather, I knew it was Wednesday, I just couldn’t remember what it meant. I woke up about four hours ago — yeah, I know — with the certainty there was something I did on Wednesdays. For the life of me, I just couldn’t remember what.

No, I’m not going doolally, or at least not more than usual. I not only spent the night dreaming about the stupid book but I left Winter Prince hanging in a difficult place yesterday AND spent two hours awake in the middle of the night because thunder. So, I’m working a little worse than normal.

Which is a great time to explain how writing — particularly novels — depends a lot on learning to play chess with yourself.

I have an advantage on that because I was a profoundly lonely child. Meaning that I played by myself a lot. The next youngest person in the house was 9 years older (or so) and precocious, so he really was profoundly uninterested in snakes and ladders or candyland or even monopoly, not to mention other, sillier board games. He did eventually play chess with me, but that was when I was over 20 and therefore didn’t set my early habits.

Because no one in the extended family understood that I spent 80% of my time alone or that I couldn’t convince adults to play with me, I got a lot of board games. A lot. And some of them looked very interesting, but I had to play them alone.

I finally figured out how to abstract myself from each side of the play and …. dislocate my mind so I didn’t know what I intended with the play. If it sounds like going nuts by the numbers, it was. It’s also a useful skill for a novelist.

Okay, my own experience is probably a bit crazier than yours, because I get the novels narrated to me, and if I don’t move along, tout-de-suite I end up getting vivid dreams of the character/world. Now why in holy hell I needed the first romantic experience of one of my characters last night, only Bob knows (And even Bob– my name for my internal editor, btw — is somewhat puzzled). I mean on the one hand, better understanding of the character, yay. On the other hand, it really has nothing to do — or very little, other than understanding the character — with what’s going on now.

Only prompting I can imagine is that I was talking to a friend about how that entire relationship — in the firm past of the book — should be skivvy but isn’t.

Now I got it vividly with smells and sounds — no, no. The ROMANTIC part, not the …. you know? My characters have the sense to know how doors work. Which is good, because in this case I don’t want to know — and discussions and one of their feelings. But does it need to be in the book? Probably not. At some point one of the characters might mention how a very young ice nomad was so confused at the king’s interest (no, they’re not male. Pronouns are inadequate. Roll with it. I said it was the damned book. And made up pronouns just stop the reader, and in present day make you sound “political”) that he took off to the frozen wastes and made the king track him down for over a month. Maybe. But that would be a throw away line, and while it illuminates the character and the parents of the main character in the current book, it doesn’t actually — Oh, wait. In a way it foreshadows the ending of this book. Um… I might need it. But it would still be a relatively short thing. Maybe a paragraph when a character experiences the other’s memories.

But the point is, from the reader point of view, other than a bit of foreshadowing it doesn’t matter. Except it does to me, from the inside, because I’ve lived with these characters so long, and that bit of information is both so utterly logical to the characters and so utterly odd of one of them (Would you abandon your massive responsibilities to go track someone down when you don’t have to? Don’t answer that. But it’s not characteristic of the king) that I feel I know them a little more.

Anyway, I realize most of you don’t get your books told to you, and you probably don’t stop in the middle of writing an argument to realize that your character made his own underwear and is no expert needleworker, and it doesn’t fit right and is bothering the heck out of him, which you won’t put in the book, but can giggle about. And I realize most of you don’t dream your books.

But I know, because I’ve also written books from the thinking side out, assembled piece by piece, particularly if you’re a slow writer, and you spend a lot of time writing, you can lose track of what you were doing in a particular scene.

For instance, the one of you who sent me a scene — sorry, not picking on you but it was both so well written and such utterly wrong signaling — where it seemed like the beginning of a thriller or perhaps a murder mystery, but it was a light romantic comedy: you want to show the character’s traumatic past, and you want to make the scene grabby, and as a scene it makes perfect sense.

What it makes no sense whatsoever as, is as beginning to a romantic comedy.

So, lest you think I’m encouraging your inner, deranged Bob (the critter who lives in your mind and tries to stop your writing every five minutes, by adjusting your glasses and asking you in the most pedantic of tones if that scene should be in the book, and/or worse whether that WORD is what you want) stop that.

Don’t stop writing. If needed build a mind cage for Bob and lock him in it, with a strip of ducttape across his mouth. (In a particularly trying time of my life, I made posters with a forbidden sign and Bob in the center and taped them all over my office. This gave my older son, whose name is Robert, quite a shock. Ah, well. I explained. And no, I don’t know why the annoying editor is Bob.) Just write.

In fact, don’t workshop your book till it’s done (a lot of your beginnings showed signs of the demons of workshops) or otherwise listen to “rules” on how to do it. Just write the damn thing. Write. Write. Write. Throw everything in, including the characters uncomfortable drawers, if it comes to mind. JUST WRITE.

Then throw it in a drawer.

Go vacuum the cats, scrub the toilets, read all those books that threaten to collapse and crush you on the bedside table. Take long walks. Or, if you’re really broken, write the next book.

Then come back. Pretend the book isn’t yours but a friend’s who asked you to improve it. Go over it. Is that beginning too heavy for a romantic comedy? Do the readers really need to hear about underwear, or will it provide a nice, funny note in the middle of a tense scene. You know: “Well, Martha, I’m still furious at you for burning down our house, but the fact is I had to make my drawers myself this morning from scraps of curtains, and it’s making me extra mad.”

Anyway — remember Sarah, other people have sane characters. Allegedly — see if the story you’re telling makes sense outside your head. And if you hook the reader right and proper at the beginning, and keep them going through the book.

Now, one thing is very important: You’re going to say you don’t know how to do that, but you do. You’re a reader. If you weren’t, why on Earth would you be trying to write a book? So, let your taste guide you.

Yes, that means you might not know if your taste is like other people’s. Well, it could be considerably worse. I know my taste is not like anyone else’s, or certainly not like the majority of readers. How do I know that? Because most bestsellers (though not all, arguably) bore me to unutterable depths.

However, particularly with Indie, there should be enough people like me. And there seem to be.

HOWEVER before you start it really is important to forget you wrote the book. Or learn to pretend you didn’t. This does two things: It makes it possible for you to evaluate things like the beginning. Not just signaling, but whether it’s interesting enough.

For instance, starting with “slice of life” in the character might seem very gripping to you, but that’s because the character is yours and you know they’re going to go through hell. But if you pretend it’s not yours: would you want to watch someone just…. drink coffee? Leaf through a magazine? Would you not start hoping one or the other is poisoned, if it goes on too long. Would you know what “Flying a Phoenix 5000” is (this is something I did in a story) OR would you feel a need to know if it’s an anti-grav wound, a steam flyer, a broom, a …. literal phoenix?

Also on that, yes, I know, I know Campbell “Start in the normal world.” Remember the normal world can be your character drinking coffee at his dining room table before the aliens land on the line.

Literally: There I was, having coffee. It was seven in the morning, and I was bleary. I needed to get dressed and drive to the office, but I didn’t feel like it. I’d spent the night awake because of a monster storm. And then, suddenly, out of nowhere, a shiny blue light appeared outside my window, lighting everything in a surreal way–

The normal world is there, and you know your character is normal. And now you can take it for a spin. Any longer than that and unless you’re writing slice of life, you’ll signal wrong.

The other reason to forget your book is yours when reading for edits is because of what I spent years doing: I removed anything that elicited embarrassment from me. Sure, the fact that the character’s underwear chafes, but also the characters strong emotions, good or bad, his and her deepest fears, attachments, loves, peeves, interests. Heck, I excised laughter from my books. And I could never allow my characters to look ridiculous.

It was only when I learned to leave that stuff in, because if I hadn’t written it I’d like it, that I started selling regularly.

So, write the thing. Then look at it from the other side.

Yeah, yeah, answering questions, exercises, critiques. It will come. It’s been a bit crazy, and not just inside my head.

But we’ll get to it. Maybe even next week.

Until then, go play chess with yourself.