Yesterday, I found a new…

Yesterday, I found a new author I love, which is always a cause for celebration; I read and really enjoyed Holly Black's Tithe, based I think on a recommendation from Justine Larbalestier's blog -- it's got high and low court faeries, fast action, realistic teen sexuality, and some serious moral edginess. I go read more of hers soon.

And maybe it's because I read something good yesterday that I woke up this morning with two things -- an image and a bit of character insight.

The image is of a teenage girl cartwheeling across the quadrangle lawn in the very early morning -- but not just cartwheeling. Doing handsprings and round-offs and back flips and whatever else a gymnast can do on a flat surface. And she isn't happy, which is what you might expect if you thought of a girl doing cartwheels. She is furious and passionate.

There's a boy watching her, starting to fall in love, though he doesn't know it yet.

Even better, I know why she's doing cartwheels, and knowing why unlocks a whole set of emotional motivations, a sequence, that makes a new chunk of the novel fall into place with a glorious, "ahhhh..." I love when that happens. I still have to write the damn scenes, of course, but now I know why I'm writing them, where before it was all darkness and confusion.

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