Oops

I was making great progress on the book. There was all kinds of tension, and I'd built up to the first big turning point, with a major chapter-ending cliffhanger.

And then during the night after writing it, I had a "hmmm" moment because it was giving me deja vu. I thought I ought to check something in the previous book because my recollection was that a character had at least gained more of an inkling about that thing, and that might mean I needed to shade the revelation differently.

It turned out that I'd actually revealed that thing in the previous book. So there went all the tension and the big "aha!" moment. I don't think anything but the last 5,000 or so words (and only bits and pieces of that) will need to be rewritten, but it will affect shadings of everything else, so it's back to the drawing board, to a large extent.

I may actually backburner it for a little while to work on that proposal I'm developing, which has really taken off in my head. Timewise, that's more important, as I want to get it to my agent before she breaks for the holidays (and maybe that means she might get to look at it to act on early in the year), while I just want to have a finished book on this other project before everyone returns from the holidays early next year.

Since I was frustrated by the writing, I went shopping yesterday. My parents have offered to get me a new bed for Christmas, and I need to pick it out. I went to one of those mattress stores that does the scientific analysis of you to suggest the ideal bed for you. You lie on a bed and it scans you (probably for weight and height), then you get into your usual sleeping position, and it scans again, then gives you a readout of recommended mattresses.

Wow, were they all very different from what I have now. The problem was, they were all so much better than what I have, and they were all pretty close, that it was hard to tell what I liked best. It was like going to the eye doctor and she flips the little lens things around and asks which one you like better, and you can hardly tell the difference. I was surprised by how much I didn't like the Tempurpedics. I'd have thought that would have been ideal for me. I wanted to do a little more research before making a final decision, and now I'm glad because the one I liked the best in the store has terrible reviews. They almost all said it was really comfortable in the store and for the first few months, but it started sagging badly almost immediately after the store's guarantee expired and they had to deal with the manufacturer, and the manufacturer was a nightmare to deal with for the warrantee.  So, now I need to go back and look at some of the other ones that I didn't like quite as much in the store but that have much better user feedback.

I also learned that the "price match guarantee" some of the stores offer doesn't mean much because they game the system -- the same mattress may be sold under different names at different stores, but since that name isn't available elsewhere, you can't get the price matched. There was an online chart showing what the equivalents are, and it turns out that Macy's offers the same thing for a lot less. I may have to run up to Macy's and see how it goes and what they offer. I feel a little bad using the one store's electronics to tell me what to get and letting that salesman spend so much time and then running elsewhere, but I guess that's the way retail works.