Week two started with an interesting revelation: My brain is a sponge. Writing is what happens when that sponge gets squeezed.
This was supposed to be a simple, straight forward time travel story. It has expanded to includet mythological figures, redneck vigilantes, healthy doses of game theory, and the ghost of Marshal MacLuhan leaning over my shoulder offering narrative suggestions.
Ye olde subconscious is offering up absolutely everything that ever held my attention for more than 30 seconds for inclusion in this first draft. That’s 40 years of infatuation, intrigue, titillation, outrage, and confusion gushing forth.
I’m elated that so many ideas pop to the surface at the simplest sign of encouragement . However, trying to get them all to play nice and fit together is daunting. It occurs to me that this may very well be why I write – to make more room for soaking up more information. It’s my intrinsic de-frag algorithm. It’s how clean house, organize existing data, and make room for more.
To aid in that metaphorical house cleaning, I have started a MindMap of the story’s constituent parts:
I find this works great for a visual thinker like myself. I can take a look and realize ‘ yeah, I need 1000 words about the Orientation meeting,’ and I instantly have a writing goal. Nice thing is, the FreeMind software cooperates with the ThinkingSpace program on my mobile. So if I get inspired while in the line up at the grocery store, it just takes a couple of clicks, to add an event, character, or a quick note.
How cool! Both the map and your wonderous conglomeration of events.
Happy nanoing.
Trev,
I feel exactly the same way. Especially the ‘how the heck do I make all this fit together’. Holy smokes, I feel like I’ve written myself into what could become eternity. Love your visual bubble map. Maybe I’ll try one of them out. The plot is still unraveling and I have 20 characters so far, with four povs (Holy freaking cow).
Thanks for sharing! (I’m secretly rooting for the rednecks)
I love the way that writing makes any experience or activity worthwhile — it fills up the sponge.