599 words tonight.  It's amazing how sticky spots can get me bogged down for a week while I think about how to get around them without excessive deux ex machina.  My dad once told me that he worked a project over in his head until he could sit down and build whatever it was once.  He'd sit there at his desk at work, smoking and thinking, and he'd sit in his chair at home in front of the t.v., thinking. (Not smoking, because my mother made him swear to not smoke at home or in front of the kids.  She was concerned that we would pick the habit up.  Strangely, the boys knew he smoked and they have both struggled off and on with nicotine addiction.  I didn't know he smoked until I went to college, and I never picked up a cigarette.  Go figure.)

I realize now what that's like, because I do that with my writing.  I'll get to a point where I get stuck, and I'll stop writing, and instead I'll think. I'll run through all the different scenarios I can think of, playing them out to see if they run me into a wall I can't get around.  I'll be washing dishes and thinking about times and alibis.  I'll go a week without writing anything at all, because I can't progress until I know where I'm going.  If it's a really bad break, one that seems irreconcilable, sometimes it'll be a month.  And then, something will click, and I'll know where I'm going again, and I can pick up and go. 

This one was a bad one.  I'm so glad to be past it.