Cooking the Hook

I've been studying the Tarot for years. I'd love to make a living being the exotically draped crone telling and making fortunes on a vine-dripping, candlelit veranda somewhere. Terrified that it will come to pass. When I have been so bold as to give a reading (something about getting paid to do this is frightening) I tell people that the cards are just a way of shining a light on possible choices. Choices we all have, moment to moment. Pointing out options that one might not have considered. Signposts...cue the twilight zone music. It's like this. I'm deep into revising, rewriting actually, the novel I've been working on for three years. It's really two, possibly three, books and there's been a full-time job and a lot of life along the way so I don't feel bad about the time span. I've come to a place in the story where I have to acknowledge Anna's profound loneliness, and as the dudes say, I am unmanned. Can't get it up. Can't go th

I walk in circles for a half hour, netting up the tree trash, setting up a gentle underwater cyclone to gather the wandering loose crap into the center. I made another circle with the brush all around the insides. Think of Death with his scythe. By now the really small stuff has gravitated to the center and I net it up and dump it over the side. The pump is ancient and does little more than create a desultory current. The cleaning is up to me. All the while, I've been back thinking about the Problem at Hand..whatever scene or situation in the MS that I'm working on, or working hard at avoiding. Today was the first time this year that I've gotten into the water and put this routine in motion and it paid off handsomely. While I was staring at my toes a real, juicy motivation came to light for one of the antagonists in my book. Before now, he was just a miserable bastard. Now he's a miserable bastard with a mission.