Epiphanies and phantom titles

Fellow writer Cora Zane was talking about epiphanies on her blog. A timely post, since I just had an epiphany the other day with regards to my WIP - Wolfsbane 2.

I'd been laboring along, working with a page from my calendar so I could keep all the important days of the week straight and follow the full moon in a reasonably accurate fashion. [Full moons being important to werewolves and all] and the other day it occurred to me in one of those DUH moments that the 'climax' to to speak of the story needs to be on the night OF THE FULL MOON. Not, as I had previously plotted, a week BEFORE the full moon.

What was I thinking?

I have no idea why on earth I would plot a werewolf story to take place entirely before the full moon. I didn't realize my massive error until I got ready to begin the final chapters, the big payoff, the final battle and thought to myself...gee, this would be so much cooler if the villain could transform into his wolf self right about...hey...wait a minute.

Why can't he?

Somebody tell the author to make the villain able to transform into his wolf self now, please.

A small voice came back to me and said, "The writer is on strike."

I said, "No, she's not. She's just having lunch. Get her back in here and tell her to change all this so that the full moon rises right about the time the villain is ready to put his dastardly deeds in motion."

"She won't like being disturbed," the voice said.

"I don't care," I said. "This is important. It will make the whole story so much better."

"Okay," said the voice. "But she gets cranky when she has to make revisions."

"Too bad," I said.

So I made the author change the whole ms and even print out a new calendar page for a different month so the full moon would fall exactly on the date that the villain does his stuff. Of course that took up a whole day - the rewriting and fixing, but now I'm ready to write the ending, and hopefully it will all make sense now and readers will go, Wow - how cool that all this just ends up happening on the night of the full moon and everything.

THEN, I had another one of those AHA moments. Totally unrelated to my WIP, I came up with another kick arse title for a book. Yes, this title rocks! I have no plot to go with it, no blurb, no nuthin' - but damn it's a faboo title. I must use it.

I have no idea how. SIGH.

Off to wait for another epiphany.