Today, I'm stuck in my apartment because (A) the maintenance guy was supposed to fix the leak before it became something like last year (for fact, I am still waiting for them to visit today) and (B) I cannot move either of legs. I volunteered to spend yesterday painting at my sister's house. Yep, volunteered.
What was I thinking?!
Anyway, I tried to write. But every time I finish a chapter or a few pages in my manuscript, I don't see the whole picture. Similar to the great painters like Monet or Degas, I need to view the entire project and not just page-by-page-by-page. I'm not like Stephen King (Stephen King is known as a "pantser").
So, I decided to lay out the entire book. After I grab two stacks of stickie notes, I wrote with very little detail. Sometimes I hand-write because it feels more real than my boring computer (but who am I kidding? I need my computer!). Within twenty minutes, I had ten chapters laid out, yet the rest took me a while. And when I say, "a while" I mean "the better portion of five hours."
Tiny details start to take form in my mind: Magz and the little scar on her Achille's heel: Julia and her miserable life although her husband provides with plenty of money: Elijah and Jeremiah may be twins, but that's as close as they come: and Trinette, humble Trinette, searches for love, despite her not wanting to find it. Each instrument comes together in an orchestra.
When I finally finished the rough, rough outline, I was proud of myself. I'll see the sights from Black Hole Symphony over the course of the summer like John F. Kennedy Library, Museum of Science, and Cape Cod. I'm excited to visit there next week. I need to research the ballet schools in Plymouth, but for now, the rough draft, stage one, is complete.
It's like watching a sunrise after the darkest of storms, as cheesy as it sounds.
Comments