After procrastinating (although, one could argue that the music purchasing – I’m a member of an online music voting group – and software buying – I’d nearly reached the end of my free trial period with Scrivener, and I like it – was necessary), I finally set about doing some writing during my son’s late morning sleep today. He’s due to wake soon, so I’m going type this note quickly. I learned something the other day – yesterday, in fact … No, I’ll say I learned it now, actually.

See, during my procrastinating yesterday, I visited Elmore Leonard’s website and looked up some of his stuff. I came across a short interview with him, in which he said that he didn’t always know how a scene was going to go, he just knew its purpose, and then he would write it. He also mentioned that characters had to talk to him or they were liable to get killed off, but that’s another matter. It came as a breath of fresh air to me. When I first started writing, I just wrote and hoped something entertaining would come of it. And, something did. It wasn’t awesome, but people liked it.

Then I got further and further along the path of enlightenment. I learned about the Snowflake method, I learned about Outlining, I learned about PLANNING … And then I got pregnant and had a baby (oh, the Outlining learning came after the baby … but, meh, details details), and time to write got ever shorter. And so I got to thinking – it’s not about working harder (I don’t have the time for that), it’s about working smarter. My thinking started to turn towards building up a rock-solid outline, have everything nutted out and planned, so I knew exactly how things would play out, and when I had time to write I could do just that.

But … Continue Reading…