Thursday, December 8, 2022

Lucy is at the Beginning Again! @LucyBurdette #writing

 LUCY BURDETTE: Albert Einstein was once asked how he worked and was said to have answered “I grope.” That feels so familiar! I don’t know if all writers are like this, but I’m always searching for a new approach to getting good words written a little faster. My ears perked up a couple of months ago when Julia mentioned a session she’d had with a mutual writer friend, Jessie Crockett, a.k.a., Jessica Ellicott. She developed a system for brainstorming that worked to provide a book skeleton for even the most devoted pantsers. (A.k.a. those of us who try to write a book without an outline. The keepers of the black hole...)

This is for a different book, but you get the picture!



The tools for this project were simple: sticky notes, different colors for each point of view. Plus a big whiteboard. (Jessie wears headphones and dictates most of her own writing.) She asked me what I knew about the book so far. It wasn’t a lot. I knew exactly how it would open, what Hayley was going to get involved in. I knew that some of it would take place up the Keys in Big Pine Key. I knew there was a cold case. Jessie madly wrote possible scenes down on the stickies and pulled all kinds of information out of me that I didn’t know was there. Because they were on stickies, they could easily be moved around into better timelines. My writing pals Ang and Chris were there for the zoom session and had lots of good ideas, too.

Chris plotting her book


Here's a snippet from that opening chapter (no name for the book yet:)


I scrolled through my stuffed inbox, deleting all the messages from spam to junk to ‘sat on it too long to answer’. I paused over one email that arrived the night before from a name and address that I did not recognize. As my finger hovered over the delete key, the alluring subject line made me pause: Hemingway’s toxic love and an old story. I couldn’t think what kind of clever angle this spam might hold, so I opened it up to see.


Dear Ms. Snow, you don’t know me, and I apologize for intruding into your inbox. I have read a lot about you, both your restaurant criticism and your crime solving. I am hoping to interest you in talking with me, at your convenience of course. 

Below this introduction was pasted a screenshot of a yellowed newspaper clipping.



Monroe County Sheriff’s Department Investigates Report of Missing Woman. May 13, 1978. A 22-year-old woman approached the Sheriff's Department reporting that the friend she had traveled with several months ago from Michigan to the Florida Keys has disappeared. Deputies interviewed all available witnesses and investigated the area where the alleged victim was staying with her friend. There was no sign of criminal activity, although the alleged victim had been living in a commune-type encampment which was subsequently evacuated by the Sheriff’s Department. Several people familiar with the situation reported that the missing woman had been restless and eager to leave the Keys.

“I was the one who reported Veronica missing,” the email continued. “As you can read between the lines, the authorities brushed me off, insisting that she’d left the area of her own volution. But she never turned up in Michigan after I went back home, nor have I heard from her since. I even hired a private investigator. His trail ran ice cold once he hit the Keys.

You've had some experience solving mysteries and I’m hoping that you might help me look into this one.


LUCY AGAIN: One of the reasons that I think Jessie's system works is it doesn't give your brain a chance to say NO NO NO. And that keeps the ideas and possibilities flowing. I've invited Jessie to blog about plotting in January, but meanwhile, do you have ideas for keeping the creative juices flowing?

My stickies after Lottie got involved



63 comments:

  1. How wonderful that the brainstorming session worked so well for you . . . it’s always wonderful to find something that makes things easier!
    And now I’m intrigued and I want to know what happened to Veronica! I’m looking forward to reading the book . . . .

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    1. thanks Joan! I'm sure it will break down once I've run out of stickies:)

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  3. This is SO impressive! Will you do a class for us? AMAZING!

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    1. Jessie is coming to the blog the first week of January--she's the expert!

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  4. I love that no one is tied to one specific brainstorming activities. If it works for you, than it works for you. Sometimes just emptying your mind lets the creative juices flow.

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    1. Exactly Dru, which is why ideas sometimes come in the shower or on a dog walk!

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  5. I'm glad that worked for you, Lucy. Several other author friends have plotted with Jessie. Will the method work next time without her input, do you think?

    I'm sticking with my undefined pantsing, aided by a very short synopsis and lots of walking and talking out loud. It's working for me, so why change a good thing?

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    1. I've already scheduled another session for a different book--not a mystery so it feels harder. You should absolutely stick with what is working for you!

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    2. I guess I mean, is the method transferrable, or are you relying on Jessie's ideas?

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    3. Jessie's ideas really came from what I told her, but her process doesn't allow for "no, that won't work"--which is helpful to me!

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    4. "her process doesn't allow for "no, that won't work"--which is helpful to me" -- Roberta, experts say this is the key to brainstorming. No judging, just ideas. That's the concept of divergent or associative thinking. Later, we can use plasticity or the flexible mind to pick and choose and adapt, and convergent thinking to pull it all together.

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  6. It's certainly an interesting approach. Right now I don't have a whiteboard to stick anything on (our "stuff" is still in undelivered shipping), but my brain is filing this away for the future.

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    1. Worth a try! as you might be able to see in the pix, I stuck some stickies to a big cookbook. Chris bought a big piece of posterboard, so it needed be officially a white board!

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    2. Elizabeth, you could use a spot of wall, or the back of a door, too.

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  7. LUCY: Yay, I am happy that Jessie's sticky note method worked for your new WIP. Looking into a cold case could get Hayley in many different situations (+ new food adventures)!

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  8. I've used index cards (or scraps of paper to replicate them) instead of sticky notes. They're small enough to hold a small idea (no pressure to come up with big ones!) and can be shuffled around easily on the dining room table or my desk.

    Maybe a change of pace could spark the old juices, Lucy? I've recently tried writing flash fiction and even micro fiction -- short (< 1,000 words) or super short stories (< 250 words). It's all the fun of story-telling without the pressure of sustaining the arc over pages and pages.

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    1. Smart Amanda! I find shorter fiction even harder to write but it sounds as though it works well for you.

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  9. I do something similar with sticky notes on the dining room table. I remember a story Jeffery Deaver told: he had a wall of sticky notes for his current project and in the heat and humidity of the summer, they all fell off the wall into a jumbled pile.

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    1. ack! as long as the dog didn't grab them as mine would have, he could hopefully recreate!

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  10. Very cool. I can see how this would work to expand the possibilities and the flexibility of the narrative.

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  11. I love the snippet, Lucy. The activity of deleting emails is such a perfect set-up for finding one that leads to an adventure. Hayley can't resist the tug of a mystery, even a very old one.

    Jessie's method sounds logical and user friendly. Never having written a story, I can't say that it would work for me. I have written essays, speeches and reviews. Even if it is just a one paragraph review for Audible, I read and reread what I am writing, checking that the ending goes with the beginning and that the middle helps it make sense. The key is not only what to put in, but what to leave out. Sometimes you have a hundred ideas but need to choose the one you're going to discuss and chuck the rest. Having these ideas on post-it notes will simplify that aspect and also help when it's time to put it all in order. I like it, Lucy! "New tricks!"

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  12. Lottie!! Nooooooo!! Give her some fake sticky notes and see if that will divert her attention!

    And just so you know, I too am stealing this idea. I have a posterboard (white) and will get some sticky notes today. There is a story I've been grappling with because of multiple plot lines and shifting time periods. Maybe this will help me find the strongest way to fit them all together!

    Oh Hayley! I really can feel Lorenzo providing some insight here--I think it's because of the nature of the setting of the young woman's disappearance--the 'commune-type' encampment--out of the ordinary. You really feel the friend's pain and loss--still, after so many years. Can't wait to read this one, Lucy!

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    1. thanks Flora, and now I will get Lorenzo on it! You are welcome to steal whatever works!

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  13. Oh, Lottie. This puts a new spin on "my dog ate my homework".

    Brilliant idea! Looking forward to hearing the difference it makes to your progress, Roberta.

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    1. Her puppyish demon side still comes out from time to time:). thanks Karen!

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  14. Lucy, puzzled about “run out of stickies”…thinking that is just not possible, remedy by a trip to office supply or do you mean stickies that already have ideas on them? Very much want you to write faster, this book sounds amazing. Elisabeth

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    1. Yes, the stickies with ideas is what I meant. Thanks so much for the encouragement!

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  15. I'm a huge fan of yellow stickies. Anything to get you unplugged and seeing possibilities. Plotting with friends is another great idea -- even though I usually reject all of the wonderful suggestions fellow writers make, the process of thinking why it's a "no" gets me to a fresh idea. Lucy, we're all thrilled that you're back moving on from *restart*.

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    1. Hallie, yes, I find arguing against someone else's suggestions ("No, it didn't happen that way!") really helps clarify the story.

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    2. My plot group is AMAZING even if they just get me thinking more broadly about the WIP - which is the kick in the pants I usually need.

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    3. thank you dear Reds, love hearing about your processes...

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  16. Rhys: I love this, Lucy. Both the story idea and the approach. I also use post it’s on a white board and for my bigger books with multiple points of view I draw time lines in different colors to see when they intersect. It’s very satisfying to remove the post it when I’ve used that scene!

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    1. I always remember you describing how you wrote two separate timelines and then laid all the pages out in the hallway...I will have to figure out here how much the reader wants or needs to hear from the older point of view...

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  17. LUCY: Thank you for sharing this! I remember reading that Alexander McCall Smith just writes and writes. I cannot recall if he writes an outline first or if he is a "pantser"? I was reminded that when I was in high school English (college prep class), our teacher always said start with an outline.

    At uni, I often used sticky notes when studying and remembering the important points before my exams.

    Now I am going to try that for my stories. Thank you!

    My writing is kind of all over the map right now. One day I would be writing about a character. One day I would be writing a plot. I am trying to remember to do all these five for my mystery : WHAT, WHERE, WHO, HOW, WHY.

    Diana

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    1. I am betting that AMS is a pantser but I could be wrong! Sounds like you are doing well with your process Diana!

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  18. Love this idea and looking forward to Jessie's blog! Off to buy stickies. Wondering how my cats will involve themselves...

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  19. Lucy, I'm so glad Jessica's technique is working for you! She taught me the same way to work on a plot when I confessed I was allergic to outlining, but I also dreaded sitting down each day at my laptop and not knowing where the story was going.

    It definitely works without Jessie's personal input; we never discussed any actual plot points of AT MIDNIGHT COMES THE CRY. Instead, like you, I found it enabled me to leap over the "Argh, I don't know what happens next!" gnome in my brain, and go straight to, "Okay, I do know this scene is going to happen, even if I'm not sure where." Once you have enough of the latter scenes up on your Post-it notes, the gnome goes away and you start thinking about what will happen between the moments you've already captured - and before you know it, you have the building blocks for whole acts!

    And for those of you who are whiteboard-less, like me, I put my stickies on the back of my office door!

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    1. You describe it brilliantly Julia...we hope the new book is full of stickies!

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    2. Thank you for the door suggestion. I can't imagine where I would put a whiteboard and since my office is cedar lined, stickies don't stick - for long. The door works!

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  20. It’s great to have a new tool available to use. I can see how a light can go off in your head, followed by an idea written on a sticky note!

    I think this method can be used for other projects, too, and I’ll keep it in mind.

    Looking forward to the Key West mystery that will come out of this!

    DebRo

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  21. Lucy, I think the stickies are a great idea! Also brainstorming with writer friends! For years I've written columns of storylines in different colors, but you can't move things around very easily. Maybe I'll switch! I also like playing "what if" and just jotting down everything that comes to mind. Idea maps are good, too.

    Also, I love cold case stories and can't wait to see where this one goes.

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    1. Oh I can see we are all going to be so productive after this:)

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  22. Brilliant! I wish I could share a screenshot of the sticky notes all over my white board. This is exactly how I outline. It is sooooo much easier to move ideas and plot points around while you write when they're on little paper squares. Bravo, Lucy, welcome to the world of plotters :)

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    1. Oh gosh, Jenn, I wouldn't go that far:). But whatever works works!

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  23. In the absence of a large whiteboard, office closet doors will do! At one point while I was writing Blind Faith, the bifold doors were plastered with rows of sticky notes in three colors, one for the present-day cold case investigation, one for the historic scenes, and a third for the newspaper articles that pop up now and then. Even though I had a partial written outline, it was so good to be able to glance over and see the complicated timeline at a glance. Plus, easy to move around as needed Hurray for the sticky note!

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    1. I don't have a closet nearby but there are two pocket doors with mirrors on them. That could do the job nicely!

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  24. Sounds like a great idea yet still flexible. Hope it works for you.

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  25. For years now my husband has written notes to himself on stickies and puts them on the bathroom mirror over his sink. Now if he'd remember to take them down. . .

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  26. New approaches to a task do spark creativity, and the difference a few Post-Its make! Eternal gratitude to the 3M secretaries that kept the "mistake" of impermanent adhesion from being chucked out.
    I depended on them when teaching, with so many things to remember all the time, and they are the BEST bookmarks because they don't fall out. When working on a paper, I'd put a stickie by any passage I wanted to use, and take it out when I wrote that part. When there were no more, I was finished. I suppose you could take photos of the white board each day as insurance against disaster. ;-) Now that I'm hooked, I want the book. <3

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  27. I am not a writer (but a fan of all the authors here). This is so interesting to see how books can be plotted! I've often wondered how other great mystery writers like Agatha Christie, Daphne Du Maurier, Sherlock Holmes figured out their plots and characters.

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  28. I do write some and I’ve used sticky notes in different ways. I love reading about various writer’s processes.
    penmettert@gmail.com

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