Current Madness Level:* Claire Danes in "Homeland."

I said I was going to try new things, so I'm trying new things.

The current First Step in Making A Book is to accumulate a denuded forest's worth of assorted notes (a small number of which are pictured below). They are often written in no particular order, often conflicting, and generally a mess, and that's a good thing. Because an idea on paper is an idea that isn't taking up space in your head, and you can't come up with new ideas if there isn't room in your head for them.

This is a manifestation of the notion that there are two modes of working: creative and critical. Making messy notes is a creative endeavour. Organizing them would be editorial or critical. I try to separate those two aspects, because one gets in the way of the other (it is, of course, very difficult to completely silence one voice or the other, but like a lot of creative principles, demanding perfect execution is for fools). Essentially, the goal is to plant a lot of seeds and then pick the nicest flower, as opposed to planting one seed and being really careful about it and hoping it turns out to be a good flower. Even if it does turn out well, what are your other options? So I make a mess, then pick and choose. This principle has popped up a few times in my education, though it was really driven home by the practice of doing National Novel Writing Month, just once. I always seem to work this way now, whether I like it or not.

Here's the new bit: in order to get a better look at the story that's taking shape, I'm sorting and connecting my loose ideas and assembling my story line using Post-It Brand adhesive notes. Theoretically, this is a perfect accompaniment to my style of note-making, because I can move things to accommodate new ideas and there is room above and below the main storyline to inject new details, notions, images, and connections.

TANGENT: featured in these images is one of my favourite art tools: sheets of hardboard/high-density fibreboard, cut into sensible sizes. They provide a perfect drawing surface if, say, you want to sit on your couch to work (as I did for most of DD3 up until the colouring stage). Just go into your local hardware/lumber store, find a nice smooth length of hardboard, and get them to cut it for you (here, I had three panels made from one long sheet).

I had to use all three of mine because I was running out of room on my desk, and I am worried DD4 might end up being 300+ pages long, DESPITE MY BEST EFFORTS to keep it small and simple. Whoops.

NEXT STEPS:

• I need to do some drawing, because the only drawing I did over the last three months is a little portrait of Elastigirl from The Incredibles, as a gift for a friend's daughter. Gotta shake off the cobwebs.
• Once the Post-It Murder Boards have maxed out their usefulness, I might take the results and translate them into into the Scene/Sequel story-structure format. I'll get more into that later, if I end up actually using it. I used it for the novel I wrote, and it was immensely helpful with regard to stripping out redundant elements and aimless parts of the story.

* I'm not actually going mad;** I'm fine, feeling good, but come on—you can't tell me that board doesn't look a LITTLE cuckoo.

** …is what a madman might tell you.