Sometimes I try to think about and pin down how I come up with story ideas—like now when I’m trying to avoid actual writing. (Actually, I did do some revising yesterday, and I felt quite satisfied with the results.) One thing I’ve noticed is that I typically start with a character. Once I know what his or her “deal” is—a little history, a little personality—I start thinking of scenarios, and what would happen if I plonk this person down in this situation. This method seems to have worked ok for my short stories so far.

[I had this whole equation-thing going on to explain, but it seemed to introduce more problems than it explained.]

The problem I am encountering in working on a novel that has been stewing in my brain for ages is that when I adjust one thing, that throws everything else in the story out of whack, and I have to figure out how to tweak everything back into line, or even worse, have to decide what is unsalvageable. I realize that is vague enough to be unenlightening to anyone else, but it is helping me just to formulate what areas are causing me problems.

When I began the sorting project over the weekend, LNR didn’t look too bad: there weren’t a million scraps of paper with notes that I had to sort, so I was pleased to be past that stage. (I didn’t open the envelope with the previous drafts and notes and scraps.) Since I had just written something that goes with the novel story (which I will call VALE for shorthand), I had to make a place for that in the binder. Oh. My. Dwarf. I can still vaguely remember the original premise for the story, but it has gone through at least one distinct version for every 3 pages of notes, and there was a good ½-inch pile of pages. This project may end up being an exercise in futility, but it is keeping me from going mad in my spare time, so it’s all good.