Three Little Words

Saturday morning I found myself going through my desk looking for my old checkbook when I came across a legal pad where I'd jotted down some notes at least four years ago about the novel. I know it was at least four years ago because I last used the notepad when I was working for a tutoring company in Albuquerque, and that was in 2001. Anyway, scrawled on the pad was a simple bit of dialogue: "You smell smoke?"

I remembered what I wanted to do with it and I knew exactly where it was supposed to go: in the narrative I was working on at the time. But I either forgot about it or thought better of it and left it and the whole part of the plot that went with it out.

So when I found it the other day I went back some two hundred pages, put it in, and began to interweave the things that took off from those three little words. It's not going to change the course of the story, but it adds another layer that I wanted.

Still didn't find my old checkbook.