I’ve done something useful.

The planning stage of my writing resembles one shakily planted footprint followed by another wobbly tread, rather like a drunk’s homeward trail through mud. It lurches along, but now and then I get to put the next step down on firm ground. Today is such a day.

I’ve been fretting over my hero’s character for three months. I know a lot about him, but I couldn’t decide what made him tick. I needed some episode in his life before he comes into the book that would rationalise his behaviour.

I tried various motives on him for size, but none of them fitted. I tried to change him into someone different, but then he wouldn’t fit in with any of the other characters.

It came to me this morning, and it was so bloody obvious that I nearly didn’t see what had happened then. My hero needed to have been hurt as a child, but he also needed to have erased that because he couldn’t live with it as an adult. He doesn’t know he’s damaged, that’s why he’s such a difficult person. No wonder the other characters don’t understand him or like him much.

But now I understand him; so I can love him and I can write him. That makes everything worthwhile. I'm a happy Bunny.