Stuck

 

Trimmed the dog, weed whacked (always more to do), walked to the store, no writing for several days. A pivotal scene on deck. No pot. No willingness to write. Hunting a fast housefly. Smoking too many cigarettes. Listening to a baseball game. Put too much creamer in my coffee cup. Had to pour it back in the carafe to dilute it. Now I have a whole pot of tan coffee, drinkable after fixing my error. Reminds me of Aristotle making a little mistake that screwed up all of Western philosophy, explaining the difference in loaves of bread (white, wheat, rye, fresh, stale) as "accidents" that didn't change the "essence" of bread in all examples of bread. In epistemology, it's called The Problem of Universals. Thomas Aquinas used Aristotle's theory to explain how bread could be transmuted into the body of Jesus when a priest said magic words. God allegedly changed the "essence" without altering the "accidental" appearance and taste of bread. Terrible theology, disastrous epistemology. Aristotle made a tiny little mistake.

 

Back to the story I'm working on, middle of the second act.

 

Here's the situation. Hansje had a crack-up, blamed herself for a little design error that very nearly killed the man she loves and severely injured the boss who risked his life to save the hero. Whether the boss will recover is a toss-up. He lost a hand and forearm, a candidate for terminal cancer. Cosmic rays go through lead, and a lot of people who live in space die from cancer. Whether the boss dies or not is unimportant. He might make it. Hansje's design error wasn't detected, everything tested good, and it was easily fixed. The boss foreshadowed it, impossible to build a new space vehicle from the ground up without some trial and error. Splendid teamwork and heroism to rescue her main squeeze, who forgave her instantly. The injured boss forgave her, no problem. The second flight of her machine was perfect, a splendid achievement, made it possible to repair a meteor strike that punctured the colony.

 

The question is whether Hansje was changed? A little lamb by nature, given to grumpy complaints and technically brilliant, romantically and sexually vulnerable, a perfect mate for the hero and crucial to the climax (for reasons that don't matter right now) how does Hansje handle hostile, somewhat natural bureaucratic opposition in another department, all by herself? She can't fold under pressure. Too small to bully anybody.

 

Good place to be stuck. She needs to exemplify thematic elements of courage, trust, and loyalty. Not something that I want to approach without being stoned. I can author See Spot Run scenes sober and straight, but not transformational ones. This is Hansje's moment to cross an emotional rubicon. If she can't do it or ducks it, the ending won't make any sense. So I know it has to happen.

 

Writing it is something else. Need dope to see souls.