Friday, March 26, 2021

Brainstorming Shift

 I usually write my posts on Thursday evenings after the day job. Yesterday, however, the evening was spent getting the first round of Covid shots for the DH and for me. 

No problem, I told myself. I'll write it in the morning. 

We can all plainly see that did not happen. I have symptoms - relatively mild, but symptoms nevertheless. As a morning, it's also been a cluster that resulted in the horrible death of a member of my yard community (a black racer snake who likes to hunt around the foundation of the house). Buried him/her in the garden in a sunny spot. Going to miss seeing 'my' snake.

Brainstorming is generally a solo activity unless I have access to another writer who is as character-driven as I am. I like brainstorming for others. I like having others brainstorm for or with me. But it's not generally something I seek out unless I get stuck. Since brainstorming is about shifting how you think about a story, I find it useful when I'm staring at the same sentence for days on end. I don't always or even often take the suggestions giving in brainstorming sessions, but picking up ideas isn't the point. For me, the point is leveraging other people's ideas to pry my thinking out of the rut it fell into. That, for me, is the job of brainstorming with other people.

The rest of the brainstorming happens solo. Need to be able to hear those little internal voices and give them some space.

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