I was hammering away at my first draft of my next book over the weekend, and let me tell you, it felt like hammering. Like there was a big rock in my brain and I was just aimlessly chiseling away without a whole lot of real direction.

And then it happened – the “What if?” moment.

I was writing out a scene that I was pretty sure was going a certain direction, when suddenly, my brain wheeled about and said, “Wait a minute – what if she did this instead of that?”

Ohhhhhhh. The possibilities! And while we’re at it, what if we kept her doing what she’s doing, but what if he was hiding something?

All of a sudden, my stream of consciousness turned into a handful of tributaries and a whole lot of bubbling rapids that tossed me from the boat a good half dozen times and soaked me with new ideas. Oh, it was glorious!

Now I get to figure out how to make it all work. Or if it will even work. And once I do, I’ll probably come back and cut and rework a lot of it. But at least it’s there, and every “What if?” leads to a whole lot of “Surprise!” and that is writing gold, if it’s done right.

Oh, please let me do it right.

Onward.