With a Little Help from my Friends

I had brunch this morning with my friend Rosemary, who is about as crazy as I am but on just a different enough axis that we stimulate each other to new heights of silliness, rather than bogging down because we've each had exactly the same idea and can't build on it.

Anyway, Rosemary is one of my best noodling buddies. Noodling is what I call the process of tossing ideas around with someone else. When I'm just starting off on a story, a lot of the noodling has to do with background, character ...