BEAT UP BEATNIK BREAKS OFF THE NARRATIVE TEMPORARILY

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This writing machine will shut down, most likely, for several days. In two hours, I'm off to get a tooth pulled. #21. Then comes Thanksgiving. P'rhaps some family will show up? Who knows?

I'm not going to say much this morning ... I don't think. I had a short burst of creative juice yesterday, saw my way through to a new ending that will cause the novel to run one or two more chapters longer. Several potential endings are in mind. One is a pretty nifty surprise. Some are upbeat and some not so upbeat. Not sure which will win out. 


Just because I see the ending, doesn't mean it's a done deal. Truth is, though I know what "actions" need to happen, there's still the problem of making sure I get all the information in too and in proper order, i.e. the background stuff that's been hidden from the reader so that everything makes sense and comes to a neat conclusion. I do have one line I want Charley Manning to assert near the end: "This investigation ain't no neatly plotted book, pal. There ain't no smoking gun. Just a lot of smoke, mostly, and a dozen suspicions."

More than once, lately, I've felt no impulse to finish the book, almost a fear of completing it. Could it be that I don't want to have to send it around and find out no agent wants it? I'm reading a Sam Beckett bio too. Don't know why I do it to myself. That's not my ambition at this time ... to win a Nobel Prize.

Wrote more than I planned to, didn't I?