Oh, I see where this chapter is going. That’s good. I was hoping it would get around to all of this.

It’s odd how helpless one feels in the face of the creative process. You want things to happen, but the process has its own ideas and methods that it only sometimes deigns to share with its host. It will take your suggestions into advisement, and maybe — just maybe, when it’s done with its own little circles of contemplation — it will quietly stumble upon them. And then very likely it will pretend that they were all part of its plan.

Part of the skill in a creative field is to learn which battles to pursue. Few of them are worth the energy; just let the damned muse have her way. Little does she realize that it’s your ideas which inspire her.

The gratitude continues, with big thanks to Mr. Brandon Sheffield — whose enthusiasm I can credit with inching me toward actual production on this novel, and whose support does not abate.