There is one character in Hapax who consistently outsmarts me. I need an outline while writing, but it’s usually pretty loose; there’s plenty of room for intuitive leaps. It just seems to happen more often with this particular character – she’ll do something, and I’ll go along with it, and then I see what she was up to several chapters later.

She’s done it again.

There was always one little detail about her that bugged me. The more I developed the world and the characters, the more it seemed like an inconsistency. But I never changed it. I wasn’t sure why, but I knew I shouldn’t, even if it seemed to contradict the rest of the character as I knew her.

Last night, I got fed up, and thought to myself, Well, WHY is…?

And she told me.

Turns out that it’s got fairly important implications for another project, and links back to a lot of history that happened before the events of Hapax… and the writing I’m working through now.

That feeling of delight and amused exasperation never gets old.