Ideas are funny. One morning you’re setting out to make crepes so you won’t have to later, and it occurs to you that instead of making crepes, you could make sourdough crepes! (Yes, this might have happened to me personally.) And OMG do those crepes turn out good! (Note: I am a woman with a camera who doesn’t really know how to use it-apologies for poorly lit photo.)

I am still trying to figure out why I never thought of doing this before. I’ve had a sourdough starter for years. Cooked with the stuff for decades. But it had never occurred to me to sour up that water/flour/egg batter before today.

The whole experience reminded me of the very best part about my experience as a writer. (Apart from people telling me they enjoyed my books ) My fave moments in writing are those when suddenly everything is clear in a new and surprising way: sourdough crepes! Or: I thought I was going to completely cut this scene, but actually, I’m going to use bits of it in this new way I never imagined until just this moment! Honestly, it can feel like choirs of angels should be descending singing Handel’s Messiah at these times. There it is! The exact solution I didn’t even know I needed

I tell the story of how Saving Mars first started out with an opening chapter where, rather than land her ship on the president’s dog, Jess allowed herself to crash land while her world’s president looked on, oblivious to the dog’s presence. Now, in the end, I felt this wasn’t the right place to begin the story, so I cut the scene. Much, much later (maybe the fourth revision?) I realized I knew just what to do with some of the ideas from that scene. The “planetary dog”–Mars’s one and only dog–came into being and grew to be hugely important in the action of the book.

So, although my last blog post emphasized Derriere-in-Chair, I will be the first to say that sometimes, sourdough crepes just come at you when you’ve done nothing at all to deserve them.

Do you have a “sourdough crepes” moment from your daily life? (Can be non-writing-based!) I’m feeling the need to give a singed paper copy of CHAMELEON, which features crepes, naturellement! Tell me about your moment below and enter for the signed copy.

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