Beware the Ides of March ... not

Today is Friday the 13th. I'm not superstitious so it almost passed me by without notice. I have a black cat, I'm sure I've walked under more than my share of ladders in my day, and Lord knows I've broken a few mirrors in one of my 27 or so moves in my life.

I am superstitious about some things, though. When I start a new book, I have to get The Book ready. This is a small notebook that I use for miscellaneous Stuff for the work-in-progress. I paste in photographs of people who might be my main characters, I have floor plans for houses, maps of towns, snippets of conversations I overhear that might be useful. I carry The Book with me wherever I go, and by the time I finish writing the novel, the Book is jammed with odds and ends.

I don't feel I can really start a new WIP until I have the right Book chosen, the right stickers on it to indicate the theme for the book, and have picked out a few floor plans and maps of towns. Once I have that in place, I can really start writing.

I have a bin full of old Books and they've come in handy when I had to revisit a novel I wrote years ago. They remind me of who that character is, what their house looked like, and so on. I have vague plans to write one novel that contains all of my characters from my mystery stories, and it'll come in handy then. If I get to it.

So much writing, so little time!