Bigger Paper, Bigger Ideas

The highlight of my week was the delivery of all of my worldly possessions! Yay! The best part is sleeping in my own bed. And as a close second to that in making me happy, I’m writing at my own desk again! Double YAY!

So as I tried to balance unpacking with writing, I had an idea. There are hundreds of pieces of crumpled but unripped wrapping paper in these boxes. Perfectly good paper for brainstorming! I figured the worst that could happen is that I would waste some time and still toss the paper in the recycling bin. But as it turned out, that was exactly what I needed – lots of big pieces of paper that I couldn’t “ruin” with unworkable ideas, that I couldn’t “waste” because I’d paid for them and didn’t use them “properly.”

Obviously, you can see that I have key words of negativism that are problem areas for me. But having this “scrap” paper is releasing me to relax about those areas. My imagination let loose a storm of ideas, exactly what I needed at this point in my novel planning. The best part is that I think these ideas are bigger and stronger than what I’d been coming up with before.

In case something like this is what you need, I took pictures of my papers to show you. On the first piece, I wrote my heroine’s and hero’s names and then spikes out from them about anything at all that came to mind, regardless of whether I thought I’d use it. For some reason it worked out better on a huge piece of paper than it ever has before on a small one.

Character Brainstorming Diagram

I set that paper aside when I couldn’t easily think of anything else to add, and got out a fresh rumpled sheet. On this one I wrote, “Things That Could Happen” at the top. Then I again listed every single thing that could conceivably happen as it occurred to me. I listed contradictory possibilities – “She goes away with Paul” and “She decides Paul is just looking for a summer fling.” I listed possible secondary plots, and potential secondary characters. Anything that came to mind.

Things That Could Happen

Next, I titled another page “Chapters” and numbered the left side. You can see that I haven’t written anything on this page yet. Apparently, I’m still subconsciously afraid of “messing it up.”    But the next thing I am going to do is write down some of the Things That Could Happen in each chapter. I’ve got a brand new Sharpie so there is lots of ink to cross things out and draw arrows and renumber. Time to just do it!

Chapter List

Lastly, I created a NaNoWriMo chart to track my progress in November. Since it’s up on my wall instead of in a file on my computer, I can look at it and think about it all the time. Though I numbered the chart 1-30, I am expecting to do most of the work Monday through Friday, so I did the math and wrote the new daily goal at the top – 2381 words.

NaNo word count

I tried writing a scene list for the first few chapters today on regular lined notebook paper. I only got two scenes out. Makes me wonder if that already-ruined paper isn’t some kind of magic for me. Tomorrow will tell me the answer to that.

Do you need a fresh way to get your thoughts out? Maybe try using huge pieces of paper and big letters and colored markers. You can buy a box of moving wrapping paper at U-Haul for under $10. Or you can move and save the paper your dishes are wrapped in.