When Life Takes a Detour

We brought our youngest to college this past Sunday. Yes, college. Not kindergarten or middle school or even high school, but college. I have no clue how he got so old so fast!

By Saturday morning he was all packed with one important exception: he didn’t have his trombone. Have no fear, he’d just brought it in for a tune-up, which was scheduled to be completed Saturday morning. My son called the repair shop that Saturday morning, and was told it would be done in 20 minutes. Terrific! Since we were going to be in that area later in the afternoon, we decided to pick it up then.

What we didn’t know was that the repair shop (which is inside an instrument retailer) was not officially part of the retailer, therefore it kept different hours. So, when we arrived at 2:30, that repair shop was locked up tight. Until Monday. And the employees of the retailer couldn’t access it. Being our son was heading to college a week early specifically for marching band camp, having his trombone was a pretty big deal.

So, on Sunday we made the 3-1/2 hour trek to Fargo, ND, without his horn. We got him settled, treated him to a meal, then said our good-byes. We took a deep breath and made the long drive home.

Then, come Monday morning, I was at that repair shop bright and early to pick up his trombone so I could make that 7-hour round-trip trek all by my lonesome. I got a total of two minutes of face time with my son before he scurried back to camp, and I faced the long drive alone. Again.

Yeah, it was a pain in the tookus, but I had a choice to make: I could grumble the entire way, or I could make lemon meringue pie out of lemons. (I prefer lemon the pie to lemonade.)

For a week, I’d been struggling with a few scenes in my novel, Memory Box Secrets (to be released in 2015). I liked them, but they slowed the beginning of the story down, so they had to go. But how do you squeeze all the important info from two long scenes into one smaller scene and make it interesting? I eeked out 700 words last week–words that were boring, sentences and paragraphs that leaped from one plot element to another, and a scene that had no cohesion. It was bleh and had to go.

I had no clue how to write this important scene, and include all the elements needed for the story, while making it riveting. No clue until this 7-hour trip. By the time I arrived home, I had the scene plotted, the pertinent info included, and just the right amount of conflict and tension to keep the reader engaged.

Could I have achieved this without the little detour? Sure, it would have come to me eventually, with a lot more wasted hours than the seven it took me to drive. Maybe the next time I’m struggling with a scene, I’ll just have to give my son a call and let him know I’m coming on up!

Now, to get that scene down on paper …