Okay, I have received some flack for not working on my WIP (or RIP) from a fellow writer who shall remain nameless--her initials could be used by Meg Ryan--I do protest, as it seems to have been for a good reason.

I figured out the climax.

Remember, I'm talking about writing. A-hem. Now where was I? Oh yeah, ignoring the heinous RIP.

Suds (the working title), as my lovely betas can tell you, required an extreme makeover. Most of the changes (remove half of the cast of thousands, stop my heroine from eating in each scene and, perhaps, giving her more motivation than "because Bonnie thought it was a good idea") were fairly straightforward and I made them easily. But then there was the end.

You see, this book started out as a really crappy comedic murder mystery. The only problem was that you could have sworn it was chic lit until you reached page 245. Oops. And the betas gently reminded me that a hero and heroine should meet sometime before the tenth chapter. Whatevs.

So as I happily stared at the screen and made all kinds of changes, I couldn't help but notice the dark cloud on the horizon. The one that ended up being my need to turn a murder into something that wasn't a murder but still had a similar result in order to have the same groovy-cool happily-ever-after ending.

Whaddya mean most HEA endings don't need a murder to happen first? Sheesh.

So two weeks ago I realized that I needed to figure that out before I could proceed with any more changes so I could do that "foreshadowing" or what I like to call "making it sound like I know what the heck's going on" well before the big shashoomba happens.

Having a ton of paying work to do also may have taken my mind off of things.

Then, late Saturday night, my subconscious sent my conscious self a text message:

figured out shashoomba. think in showbiz terms. ttyl

Then it hit me: a very cool way to have the same effect as a murder without requiring a death. And no, it's not a coma or evil twin or anything like that, but it's close--and allows me to maintain the non-mystery nature of the revised text.

For me, this is huge. It gives me all the reason I need to push through to the end of this darn draft, create a synopsis for it and shove it out the door. Oh, maybe after getting another beta reading or two, of course.

Don't deny the power of procrastination! In this case, it totally worked for me.