Writing Off Script

It’s a crisp winter’s day here in Nebraska. (I know it’s officially fall but winter sounds more appropriate; don’t you think?)  All that’s missing is the snow and from what I’ve seen of other parts of the country, I don’t mind waiting for that.  I was working on my fifth book yesterday.  I was typing along, happy as can be.  Then I suddenly thought about the script I had laid out in bullet point months ago.  Taking a look at it I was totally off the rails.  I was in a situation that was never even planned.  What’s worse is I was taking the story down a whole new tangent which would totally abandon the script.  I stopped writing at that spot and thought about it the rest of the night.  Should I continue on this tangent and write by the seat of my pants?  I’m not a seat of my pants kind of guy.  I like to know where I’m going.  Then again, it sure was fun.  Should I erase (Hate to even say that word) from where I went off script and rewrite it?  As I’ve said many times on this blog, these words are my babies.  I can’t just give them up.  Reading over what I wrote, I was impressed.  As the cursor blinked, I thought.  Then I had a revelation.  I was thinking of this as two lines.  Why not make it a loop?  I would keep what I had written and then write my way back to the script.  It is the best of both worlds.  That is what I will be doing today.  That’s the nice thing about being the writer, you can make your own rules.