Don’t Think Too Much – Write It Down

I did the worst possible thing I could do when working on my story.

I have spent the last two weeks dreaming up plots and characters and arcs for my newest story (code named SP2M3 because SPPMMM got a little slurred verbally, lol). This book has so much room for potential, room of series growth, room for lots of characters to conflict and interact. The ideas have been flowing fast and furious. I’ve been gripping them, pondering them, and letting them go.

But the idea stream has been like the rush toward a waterfall. I wrote as much as I could when I had my outline open. I stayed awake late, dreaming up more and more. I thought I’d remember them, build on them, keep it moving forward.

And I didn’t write it all down.

When it was late at night and I was trying to get to sleep or I was on the bus then walking into work, dreaming up more and more, I thought I would remember the snippets I had imagined. And I let go.

But when I faced my outline document after a while, I realized I had missed a lot. There was a lot not on the page. And when I reached back to recall it, the ideas had washed over the edge of the waterfall, the brilliant (I’m biased) logic behind the decisions I had made for arcs and characters were now fuzzy. What I could recall wasn’t quite right–it wasn’t what I had realized in those times I hadn’t chosen to write down what I had just managed to conjure.

I turned around and, behind me, there were huge gaps. I was certain I had traversed them safely but I couldn’t recall them in their full detail.

And there is only one thing to say, to do, that summarizes what I’m feeling at this very moment at this point of discovery:

HEADDESK

Because a supernova just begins to cover my frustration. Source here.

So, please, learn from my colossal fuck up. Write it down. Write everything down. As soon as possible.

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