Creating: Writing Surprises

I had a different post planned for today. It was written, scheduled, ready to go. But it kept niggling at me. Something wasn't right.

I'm still not sure what was off. It's still in the queue, but now it's in draft form. Maybe one day I'll figure out what I really wanted to say that didn't come across, and fix it.

But for now, it's late Sunday night and I'm writing a new post for Monday morning.

Hey, better now than to wake up at three in the morning and realize I have to change it :)

This is the kind of writing surprise we don't like.

Then there's the really bad writing surprise. Once, in an editing frenzy, I worked all afternoon making hard copy edits to a chapter. Finally it was done, and I set it aside to input the next day. We were having friends over for dinner, so I tidied up the house and myself and started cooking. The evening was a success.

The next day I sat down to work. No pages. I checked the drawers, the floor, the places Shiner likes to take things he isn't supposed to have. And shreds. Nothing. Then I remembered. I'd picked up a stack of paper to shred. Yep. I'd shredded my edited pages. I spent the morning redoing what I'd done the previous afternoon.

But then there are those Oh, Sweet! surprises. You know the kind I mean.

That stray line you added to Chapter 2 because you couldn't get out of your head that finally came together with the plot in Chapter 11.

The real villain who ended up a hundred times more evil and motivated than the one you chose originally.

The hunky hero who walked on in Chapter 3 and stayed when he was really supposed to just walk-on midway through and leave.

Surprises come in all sizes and flavors.

How do you handle writing surprises - the good, the bad, and the ugly ones?