Word count: 59484 | Since last entry: 604 | This month: 2437 A good evening’s writing, the first scene in the novel where Clarity is together with Jason’s ex-boyfriend Chris. It’s shaping up into a surprisingly awkward situation; although both of them sign, Chris only knows ASL and Clarity only knows trade sign. This made it hard to write about as well as awkward for them. Fortunately, I had an idea to fix the problem, by bringing back Clarity’s personal translator Garrett, who hasn’t been seen since chapter 1 — a character I was considering bringing back later in this chapter for other reasons anyway. James D. Macdonald has said that writing a novel is like a game of chess: in the early game you move pieces into positions of power, and in the middle game they start using that power. He recommended that even if you don’t know what’s going to happen in the middle of your novel, you should try to move the characters around at the beginning… they may find themselves in positions of power unconsciously (either because you know at some level that it is such a position, or because you realize later how to use them from the positions they are in). I think I may have just seen an example of that. When I left Garrett stranded at an airfield in rural Washington at the end of chapter 1, I didn’t think we’d be seeing him again at all…