I had a tough time of it yesterday. At work, I came up with an idea. It seemed a phenomenal one at the time, an extra character filled with reams of possibilities that would throw a chaotic factor into the story. Then I got home, made dinner, and sat down in the papasan to brainstorm on the new character a bit more, it's relationships with the current ones, its goals and desires.

Then I got irritated.

I didn't know what was wrong. I just kept drawing pictures of the relationships and mini-dialogue between the characters and grew more and more frustrated as less and less of it worked.

Then my wonderful cohort suggested that I go to bed. He crawled in with me and suggested that maybe the extra character didn't offer me anything more than problems and another slew of rewrites that didn't add anything to the story but another tangent, and the other characters didn't need him because they could pick up the slack.

May I just say that I have the most wonderful writing partner in the world?