Swan Tower

I have this tag for posts, "when in doubt." It refers to the old writer's axiom, "when in doubt, send in a man with a gun." Not literally a guy with a gun, necessarily, but something to shake up the plot, jolt you out of whatever rut you're stuck in or route you around whatever wall you're facing, and make it possible to move on with the story (in a more interesting fashion, hopefully).

Well, right now I have a bit of plot I need to figure out and haven't yet, plus I'm exhausted from waking up at 4 a.m. (Thanksgiving travel, how I hate thee). So I sat down and thought, "okay, I can splice in this bit, and hopefully that will get me up to my word count for the day, but a) it's going to be hard work with my brain this dead and b) I don't know where I'm going after that."

Instead, I gave a character malaria.

When in doubt, send in a mosquito with P. falciparum.

[EDIT: At the advice of my commenters, I'm putting in a notice that this is a post about revision, not politics. I've apparently given a few people minor heart attacks already, before they got far enough in to figure out what I was talking about.]

I said it all the way back in July: "When in doubt, throw in an assassination attempt."

Now, the attempt in question ended up being canceled, but I think putting one in elsewhere may in fact be the solution to one of my problems.

Send in a man with a gun. I don't think I'll have an actual gun, but the advice still holds. Funny how this whole "learning your craft" thing involves coming around to the basic lessons over and over and over again.