I wrote most of this chapter, with flecks of dream imagery here and there.  Sort of.  The metaphysical stuff just kind of arrived in the writing of it.  And then bolts of inspiration hit while I did other things, and I had to add those, too.

This is going to complicate my storytelling enormously!  As if I already didn't have too much complicated storytelling ahead of me.  And there's so much that I still don't know yet.  And yet the implications of what I learned from writing this does answer a lot of questions and satisfies me that I was right to weave these separate missions together.

For some writers, writing is what they do.  For others, writing is what happens to us.  Though you do sometimes have to seduce the muse by putting your fingers to the keys or the pen every day, and also by filling your brain with raw material for hir to play with.  But if you don't, you pay for it in ways that I can't describe.