The Best Laid Plans

Alrighty, so since someone is quite interested in seeing a post about this weekend, I'd best get it written up.

This weekend my plan was to work on my more detailed outline and get started on character information. So, I dutifully went home on Friday afternoon and pulled out my Prewriting Notebook with all my Prewriting Articles and Forms (With tabs organizing them no less. And information indexes. There's a theory here that I'll get to sometime, but it isn't particularly exciting and I have other things to say today.)

Inside my file was a great article by Jennifer Crusie about doing a prewriting collage. I'd copied it out of the magazine I have it in so that when I was doing my next prewriting project I wouldn't have to find it, it'd be right there in my prewriting folder.

"Wow!" I thought, "This is perfect! I'm doing this highly visual superhero thing with my next project, what else could be better for prewriting than doing a collage?!?"

So, I reread my article, found my cheap board book that I had kept in reserve for my next collage project, and pulled out my boxes of collage magazines. I got all set up on the floor, spreading the boxes out and getting my trusty scissors as well as a plastic envelope to keep all my clippings in until I had enough to start arranging them and gluing them down.

Nothing.

I found a handful of images in the copious magazines that I had on hand. And that's including a pile of comic book catalogues that I had left over from my days as a comic schiller.

"That's okay," I thought, "I'll just go to the library and look at some different magazines since these seem to be for a different demographic than the one my novel seems to be working in. Then I can pick out some to buy at the store if I need to."

Nada.

I looked at entertainment magazines, fashion magazines, stuff with bright colors. None of it jumped out at me as something that would go with my book.

So, apparently, the collage for this book is not meant to be. Which is too bad, because I think it'd be really helpful. But, that's just the way it goes sometimes I guess. Instead, I think I'll try doing a blocking technique after I've gotten my outline drawn up that I read about in a couple books on writing for comics, giving a snapshot of the scenes kind of like the boards for a movie before it starts shooting.

What I did get done, however:

I started naming my characters: Our heroine is named Tilly which is short for Matilda, a good German name that she received in honor of her paternal grandmother. The woman she adores, the name she hates. I came up with a couple other names for some of the cast that I have written down at home as well, but don't have character significance at this moment.

I got a cool idea for a completely different book series when I went to see my best friend at her reading table at the psychic fair. Which I did not allow to derail me from my current project and instead just wrote down on a notecard for my ideas folder.

I went to see Serenity again, which is fast becoming my favorite movie even though I'm grumpy about people having bad things happen that can't be fixed later. If you've seen it, you can probably guess who.

Tonight: Helping with the Romance section of the Library Book Sale setup, and then going home and trying to get more of my plot questions answered while my husband cooks dinner.