muddling through the middle

i have a beginning. i have an ending. what i lack is a middle. what's funny is that i don't need that much of a middle - having plotted out the story, i see i really only need to fill up four days' worth of story-time. my notes on the ending cover three pages, so the good news is i have a very clear idea of where i'm going. the bad news is, i have no idea how im going to get there.

this place in a story always reminds me of the time i led a group of friends to a restaurant in philadelphia situated on the river. at the time, i'd moved out of the area only a few years previously, and i remembered a walkway that connected the restaurant to other attractions along the river. so out we went purposefully to the end of the pier, only to find that the walkway had been removed, and that a space of about twenty feet of dark greasy looking water (this was philly, after all) separated us from our destination. i remember looking at restaurant, so close and yet so far, and thinking... i wonder how we're supposed to get there from here?

fiction is sometimes like that. you take a path you think will get you to where you want to go, and at some point realize you're slightly off the mark for whatever reason. then the only thing to do is what we did - backtrack and try another route.

however, this plunge through the unknown feels a bit like sticking my foot in that dark and stagnant river.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.