What the sharknado just happened?

I was sitting here, polishing off the last of my lunchtime Diet Coke, writing the last three hundred words of my session for today, when all of a sudden I run, full on, into a wall.  The throttle was wide open on my Formula One racecar and some inconsiderate dude has built a cinder-block wall in the middle of the track.  I was soaring through the sky looking for my next mouse to devour and some entity has clipped my wings.  I’m in the cafeteria pounding down some spaghetti and mashed potatoes and the school bully has slammed my face down into my tray.

This is a hard stop.  A dead-end stop.  A flat-out, no-way-around-it, you-are-fargoed stop.  One of my characters has just realized (much to my surprise) that she does not want to be there; nay, that she CANNOT stay there.  That it is not only a dereliction of duty for her to be there, but that it’s humiliating for her to do so.  She not only CAN’T stay in the story as I’m imagining it, she simply WON’T.

My Id-Writer is chewing on the walls because he saw this coming: he feels as she feels, and he knows that this is a decision that I have to let her make.  No, deeper than that, he knows that it’s not a decision at all, it’s already done.  SHE’S GONE.  She’s leaving the hero and his sham of a quest in the rearview and heading for greener pastures.  IT’S WHAT SHE NEEDS TO DO, AND IT’S WHAT SHE WILL DO.  It can’t be stopped.  There’s no way around the grand canyon which has just opened up at my feet.  I’ve got to rethink a lot of things.

I’ve hit little snags with the story along the way — little surprises, little deviations from the master plan — but this is off the map.  I don’t know how the story continues if one of the two main characters leaves the other in the lurch right now.  But it will have to somehow, because I can’t go back and rewrite the things that led up to this moment.  Not now.  THAT’S WHAT EDITING IS FOR, snarls my Id-Writer, PRESS ON THROUGH THE DARKNESS AND SEEK OUT THE LIGHT.  He who turns back is lost.

Tomorrow’s writing session will be an interesting one.  I don’t know how I’m going to get twelve hundred words in — or even nine hundred, for that matter — with this goldfinger MOUNTAIN thrown down across my path.  I really don’t think I can, and that’s deeply upsetting to me, as I’ve not yet failed to make my writing goal in almost six weeks (!) of writing.  Thank goodness the weekend is on the horizon; maybe a few days to ponder will help me to unstick this problem a little bit.

So that’s the bad day.

The good news is, my foot is feeling awesome.  For the first few days after the podiatrist it felt rock-solid, then the immediate numbness of the cortisone began to wear off and I had a bit of soreness gnawing at the edges.  Today, however, is a new day.  I had a nice three-mile run this morning (with the dumb dog in tow) during which I felt no tweaks or twinges, and continuing through the day, the only weirdness I feel in the foot is right after I ice it, and that’s gone within fifteen minutes.  So perhaps, perhaps, a return to normalcy is within sight on that front.  Goodness knows I could use a nice two-hour run to work on unsticking my story.