I woke up early this morning, as my dream ended rather abruptly. In my dream, I was washing my hands in a sink of a public bathroom, when I noticed a rather ominous looking naked woman at the other side of the small enclosed space. I  thought…”Oh no, she saw me looking at her and now she will know that I find her disgusting.” – With that she clobbered me about the head and I woke up feeling very violated and affronted.

Fortunately, although it was early and I was now troubled and unable to get back to sleep, ideas flushed into my mind on a possible solution to some of my rampant chapter-tentacles in my book.

(Chapter tentacles is a reference to an earlier post about loose ends of story lines being rather like enraged, semi-severed, tentacles of a fast regenerating Hydra…thrashing and causing havoc as they resist being dominated.)

Also fortunate, was that none of these great new ideas had anything to do with that nasty lady and her bludgeoning fists. No, in fact the ideas were ones I didn’t want to admit to myself that I had conceived earlier. These ideas involve besmirching characters that were otherwise good, with semi-wicked and contentious motives.

My poor character (name not to be mentioned), I’m sorry to make you out to be the bad guy, but someone has to make sacrifices every now and then so that I can keep narrative tension. Someone needs to be the aggressor, the scapegoat, the unexpected criminal when everything seems to be safe and calm.

Oh dear, I see…my idea was influenced by the unprovoked attacker in my dream…the figure I would normally just turn away from and ignore, slapped some sense into me. Wake up and make some noise!