I'm gonna get some great titles out of this . . .

I finished a story on the Fourth of July. I'd meant to go into work and do some catching up, but I was in a reading mood, and at some point, it became a writing mood. I sat down with something I'd been working on since 2003 and it was suddenly, instantly clear to me that the sections I'd been writing as character history weren't. They were actually the stories of the dead. As soon as I knew that, I knew what the next scene had to be. It changed the entire slant of the climactic scene, and the whole thing just came together.

So last night, I was re-reading some of my work in progress, looking for other insights that might get me moving on those projects again. I came up against a story--the first about a particular character whom I love--that's complete. I completed it probably four years ago. But despite being complete, it was never right. We didn't care about the main plot. We cared about the two scientists solving the mystery, and the scenes where the main character is being Superman are mostly just dandy.

Then I looked at those scenes again, and had the sudden, profound realization that I'd been coming at this wrong. I explained it as her being Superman, as if this were a comic book disguised as cyberpunk. It's not. The whole thing is a western. All her stories are fundamentally westerns (disguised as cyberpunk). She's not Superman. She's John Wayne.

You'd think I'd have clued in on this earlier. The second or third story in the cycle is entitled "The Nun with the Gun and the Great Playground War." Okay, so that makes it an outrageous western. (Note to self, must find a better title for the first story).

So now I'm mentally going over what makes westerns work. I have a funny feeling that if I come at it from that slant, I'll do a plot shift and suddenly the whole thing will drive. Er, ride?