It’s a Monday

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Well, the lady with the shovel has resolved her dilemma, although not quite in the way either of us expected. I can’t decide if I like it when a story takes over its own writing or not…sometimes it works; sometimes I just have to stop and take stock.

Once upon a time, I heard two back-to-back workshops on plotting your novel. One lingered at length on outlines, circles and arrows, plans, revisions, and flagged manuscripts in three-ring binders.

I think I’d go nuts if I tried.

The other took a different approach, which the speaker referred to as organic writing…you take character development and a basic outline and start writing. Sometimes you may end up where you’d planned. Sometimes you have a better book instead. That worked out quite well for me in MURDER.

I’m not intrinsically drawn to charts, graphs, and notebooks. My organization mainly lives in my head, although I do find that I write down more stuff as I get older and have more coming at me. Today, for instance, I totally forgot something I’d planned all weekend to do, solely because I had so many other things coming at me. I hate it when that happens.

Organic is good, but so are a few plans, work and otherwise. Whatever your working style.

The shovel lady went off to the contest, following feedback from a couple of friends. I don’t expect it to win (too much tell, not enough show), but it was a great exercise in letting an idea flow and see where it goes.

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