I’m at a puzzling spot in this novel I’m working on. It is a novel I’ve written before, just not adequately. It is a novel I’m revisiting, redrafting, reimagining. It is being retold, though many pages of it exist. The new opening is one of those things that Changes Everything. Now, with Everything Changed, I am looking ahead, just looking, just thinking what now do I do?

This is the project I’ve talked about starting this week.

It is something I am writing (rewriting) because I want to write it, for me. And so I suppose I can take these long extended moments—such as the one that lasted all day today—and ponder how to go about this. It’s not that anyone’s waiting for me to do this, or cares.

So I’m sitting here pondering. I can see my narrator clearly. I know where she is at the moment. She’s sitting down, too. We have to get up; we have to decide where to go.

This puzzle could keep me up all night.