Scribbling Continues as Story Grows

As I scribble ideas in the notebook (and when I say scribbling, I mean scribbling. See photo of my notebook pages.) the story is turning and changing in my hands, becoming more – more layered, more complex, more detailed. Better. Bigger. Stronger. And, I hope, more interesting and entertaining.

It's exciting, no doubt about that. I have had the thrill – a cliched thrill, true, but still a thrill – of sitting straight up in bed, and grabbing my notebook. Sometimes it's just a word or two, but I know what it means when I look back and see "Fern," or "the janitor." Sometimes it's a sentence or two, even a couple of lines of dialogue. And often an admonition – "Be Funny!"

I don't want it to lose the tone and feel that I originally came up with. I want it to be fun, quick, light. I've got a ton of good background material from my research, and now I have to guard against burying the story under too much details, or too many layers, and lose the carefree spirit that I think will drive the book – and then drive the reader through the book.

That's one of things I have to watch for. I don't want to write "too smart." That sounds horribly egotistical, doesn't it? But it's something I've been warned about more than once and by more than one reader.

Serve the story. That's always the number one maxim, isn't it? Whatever you do, whatever you write, whatever choices you make in the story, always be sure that doing it serves the story.

Almost ready to start writing.