You’d be amazed at how creatively inspiring folding laundry can be.

Sounds crazy, I know, but I was working on the outline, got stuck once again on how to have Lucy track down the bad guy, and I didn’t really want to sit and stare at the screen, hoping for some kind of answer.

So I stood up, stretched and realized I had a ton of laundry on the nearby drying rack to take care of.  The folding of shirts begins.  The whole time, I’m thinking “what could she do?  I know HOW I want her to get there, but what’s the set-up?”

Fold, fold, fold.

Previous attempts at a solution had proven futile.  And I was almost done with the shirts.

She has to find this guy.  It’s the spine of the story.

Last week I had rewritten the beginning, which suddenly offered a story point which would tie in very nicely with what led up to Lucy’s current predicament.

Wow.

That was the spark I needed.  I knew what I wanted, typed out the basis of the idea, then folded the last of the shirts.

But I had to be sure this worked.  A quick jaunt to the DVD player to check how similar another well-known sequence might be.  Answer: a little, but nobody’s going to claim I ripped it off.

I had the answer I wanted.  I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t thought of it before.  It was perfect.  A little readjusting in some scenes beforehand, a burst of creativity in the handful of scenes following, including a reminder about her love interest, and there I was at page 45.

Oh so nice.

Tomorrow: the slog towards the Point of No Return continues!

Movie of the Moment: We DVR’d the last 3 CLONE WARS on Cartoon Network (something about a Dark Side trilogy, based on V’s description) and since tonight’s homework is done early, we may crash on the couch and watch all three (excluding commercials, of course).

Yessir, that girl is growin’ up right!