Daydreaming.
I think it’s a prerequisite as a writer. At least, that’s what I tell myself. I spend a lot of time with my head in the clouds. Sometimes it’s great story or blog post ideas, and sometimes it’s just me figuring out how I’ll tell my husband the news when I get a major contract.
In the daydream, usually champagne is involved and I’m wearing a slinky evening gown. In reality, it’ll probably be more like me calling him on Facetime, hyperventilating and wearing sweats. He’s a lucky guy.
But seriously, as a fiction writer, I spend a lot of time just thinking about the world I am creating. I kind of love that I get to consider it part of my job. Whether I’m driving, showering, doing dishes, or giving my daughter a spelling test (oops), I find my mind wandering and some aspect of the story will reveal itself to me.
Yep. I’m one of those hippie, dippy, daydreaming weirdos and I don’t actually feel like I make stories up, I feel like they come to me. I’m not one of those writers whose characters talk to them (yet), but I do talk to my characters sometimes. What are you doing? Are you crazy? Stop it! That’s when stuff is getting good.
Anyway, when an idea comes to me, I’ll jot a note in my phone so I can tackle the idea when I sit down to write. Sometimes, it’s a major story revelation, sometimes just a sliver of a line. A color. A glance. An offbeat expression.
At the time of this writing, I have 585 notes on my phone. It’s a sickness. I was trying to transfer them into Evernote and organize them all so that I can find them more easily when I need them, but it works better for me to just click the notes app on my phone and free-write. Not all of them are story ideas, some are reminders or quotes or blog post ideas, or grocery lists.
The story ideas may be a few paragraphs, or it may be a single word that I later I’ll have to try to remember what I was thinking when I entered it in.
I also keep a little moleskine notebook in my purse for when I feel like writing notes by hand. Some daydreams beg to be written by hand. I couldn’t tell you why, there’s no logic to it. It’s completely based on feeling. I feel something more when I write it by hand, if that makes any sense.
I used to be irritated with my daydreaming tendencies and feel like it was a massive flaw that I needed to buckle down and correct. Now, I see that God made me this way because I am a writer, and I embrace the daydreaming side of myself, allowing myself to fully enjoy the process.
But I am trying to pay more attention during spelling.
Next in this series… The Booty in The Seat Part, aka Writing. View the entire Life of A Pre-Published Writer Series here.
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