BEATNIK JUGGLING LIKE KEN KESEY, DROPPING BALLS

Writers have to know at all times what each character knows

about what's going on, what they've said to each other, what they're hiding from each other and from themselves, and what the writer wants to hide from the reader until it's time to let them in on the plot. At my age, I constantly make mistakes that have to be fixed. It gets harder and harder to fix them because fixing gets pretty complex. Quite often to fix one thing, the writer has to go back through the novel and fix all the problems created by the fix. Then he discovers that the fixes of the fix create other things that need fixing. A cascade of problems, a flood of them, bursts the dam of reality. Kesey gave up writing because, he said, he couldn't keep all the balls in the air anymore. I'm currently stuck, trying to work out one of those problems. I think I might be dropping too many balls. Some may have rolled off the stage, and I didn't see them fall. Discouraging. I don't want to have to go back through this novel an 11th time.