I mentioned Naomi Epel’s cool deck of writing advice The Observation Deck the other day, which prompted Dustin Lacina to recommend Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies deck of creative prompts. It’s available in a nifty Widget, if you happen to be a Mac owner. If you’re not, I’m sorry about the series of bad decision that has led you to that state of affairs. The prompts are little moments from Eno’s creative process. Things like Water or Go Outside and Shut the Door. They work for me. I’ve been like a self-rewarding rodent ever since I installed it. My Sudoku Widget sits idle. I notice that all parts of the creative process aren’t included, only the punchy moments. Things like Get Drunk or Give Up or Start Over didn’t make the final cut. I’m reminded of a time when I was working on Circuit of Heaven and trying to get a handle on Justine, so I had her tarot cards read. Worked like a charm, as they say. I used to do a little tarot reading in Texas, though never for money. Fiction writing is good preparation. It’s a great workout for the unconscious. Unfortunately, people will believe you, so I quit, though I’ll occasionally do a reading for one of my characters if they ask. My favorite Anne Tyler novel is Searching for Caleb, about a card reader who always counsels the same thing: Change! Amen.

I’ve been doing what I often do two-thirds of the way through a novel, I’ve been re-structuring it. My most influential writing teacher, Ellington White, used to say often that if a piece of fiction isn’t working, or becomes bogged down, the problem (or solution, depending how you want to look at it) often lies in the structure.

The phrase “think architecturally” I’m borrowing from Naomi Epel’s nifty little deck of cards recommended to me by Steve Krause, called The Observation Deck: A Tool Kit For Writers. Each card addresses some writerly advice gleaned from a wide range of writers Epel interviewed. It sounds cheesy, I know, but the idea is to draw a card when stuck or looking for a little inspiration, read the discussion in the accompanying booklet, and take it from there. It rarely tells me anything I don’t know already, but that’s usually the point: You’re forgetting something you already know!

So in my case, when I drew this card and remembered Ellington’s advice, a cursory examination of the three threads of the story quickly revealed they were seriously out of proportion with each other, and while one was ladled in great globs, the others were eked out in dribs and drabs. The sequence of events in each needed to be seriously reworked. This led to other discoveries and an end to the logjam. Feeling stuck? Ellington, Naomi, and I recommend having a look at structure.