Then, like a good little writer, I situated myself and Somewhere on our porch with some blankets, coffee, and my notepad. To be frank, I had little desire to actually write. Rather, I intended to sit with my notepad in my lap, searching DIY recipes for cosmetics I wanted to buy at Sephora yesterday but...
But while I was sitting there on my porch, minding my own business, I glanced over to the park across the street. A pair of sunglasses still hangs from the chain-link fence. I:
- Thought about taking them.
- Pondered whether that was stealing.
- Imagined their owner coming to find them and being either
- elated they remained or
- saddened they were gone.
- Imagined walking up to their saddened owner and returning them with a knowing smile.
Despite my best efforts, I was forced to oblige the story and write. The story didn't surprise me until the end, when I learned something about the story I began during NaNoWrimo last November. It's a small detail, about the lighting in a city called Home. Yet it served to more intricately connect the stories I'm writing now with the stories I wrote in November.
Even more significantly, this minor detail about lighting solidified Home as an actual place in my imagination instead of a smoke and mirrors allusion to what I wanted to be a place. I don't know if you've ever tried to create a novel out of an allusion, but its exceedingly disheartening and disengaging.
I've been experimenting with different writing methods and tactics to see what, if anything identifiable, helps me break through writer's block and other writer's ailments. You'd think that, having my bachelor's in writing, I'd have had plenty of time to experiment in college (snicker, giggle). I wasn't very curious for much of my time in school, though. I pretty much stuck with one method: wait until the night before a piece is due, skip all draft processes, crank out a final copy while feeding on my adrenaline. (Sometimes I like to call stress "adrenaline.")
