Monday, April 12, 2010

Initial Ity Bity Baby Steps

The Write 6 meet this week so we offer mini-entries on steps from idea to "ready to show the group" on our various projects.


From Robin

Original idea: 50/50 from “see a need” in the library and “learn something new on a trip.” My favorite, of course, is “have an assignment and deadline…”

Step 1: Go to coffee place, get a booth with a pad of yellow paper and a pen. Scribble very rough possibilities for a story frame. Lots of scratch outs and arrows until I can just barely see what I was thinking.



Step 2: Since I am working on quasi factual books now I research the settings, animals, weather, plants, etc, and build a glossary of fun new words. Even in real fiction I need to know if father geese actually stay near the nest during brooding.

Step 3: While I am on line play, some Chuzzle to rest my brain.

Step 4: Open 3 or 4 windows of story and research and flip around until there is a plot.

Step 5: Print out what I have a huddle over coffee again. More arrows, more notes, sometimes only the main character is salvaged.

Step 6: Go online and see if anyone else has written something like this recently because there is no reason to pursue it unless I get a really unique slant.

Step 7: Time for more brain rest with Chuzzle.

Step 8: Move paragraphs, tidy punctuation (only the really anal do it at this stage!), tweak.

Step 9: Oh, just send it! The Write 6 have been known to a plain wire hanger of a draft and encourage me to make a satin coated sachet filled story!

4 comments:

  1. Funny Robin!
    I think you're right. You do produce magical rewrites.
    I think we should call that "Peabody Power" when we leave each other feeling inspired and go home and get some good writing done or rewriting.

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  2. I can see you going through all these steps and I love it! Coffee is mentioned a couple times... oh boy do I love the coffee, it is the elixir of life.

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  3. great Robin. i used to almost always do rough draft with pen and paper. and did the highlights, arrows, white-out (remember that?), cross-outs. then it got to the point my writing just couldn't keep up with my brain like the typing on the keyboard could. there is something about the hand-written though...

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  4. I notice that you mention geese. Is there a new story coming up that we haven't seen yet? Goody!

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