It's All In My Head

One of my favorite things that happens when I'm writing is when the story really takes hold and is in my head all the time.

My head

That's happening right now with Ordinary Girl.  I've been going over what I wrote four years ago.  Some of it is story, none of it is anything I want to keep so far, so I've started looking at it as more of pre-writing, discovery writing material.  And that seems to be working.  I'm thinking about my characters almost all of the time, even when I'm doing other things.  Little story tidbits keep popping into my head.  And today I woke up almost two hours before my alarm because I suddenly knew what I needed to be doing with the old writing and my current writing to get it all flowing together so I can start actually writing the story.  Very exciting!

I am tempted to just jump right in and write what I know so far, but it's not really that much.  I know if I put more effort in over the next few days, I'll actually have a solid base to take off from.  But I am definitely champing at the bit and ready to go!

Before I move on to today's work, though, here's a nifty list of links to blog posts and a podcast all about using collage as part of your story planning.  It's something I've wanted to play with but haven't done too much.  With this inspiration, though, I think I'm going to use it for OG, especially for the parts that are about Greenvale (my personal, made up city) because I intend to set other stories there.

• An article from Jennifer Crusie about using collage for planning and inspiration
• Storywonk podcast about using collage for planning
• Another post from Jennifer Cruisie, this time about someone else's collage and planning process
• Pictures of the collages Ms. Crusie has created for her books