Day 53: Using lists to come up with ideas

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My head always feels a little fragile after I’ve had a migraine, but today I don’t feel as bad as I usually do. I was surprised I got as much work done yesterday as I did even though I lost a little less than half a day to my headache.

I had house chores to do this morning, which didn’t take all that long, but I also ended up checking email and social media instead of starting my writing work right away. This is my normal routine, so I’ll see how productive I am.

Today I’m continuing Snowflake step 6 (expanded synopsis) for the serial novel.

***

I remembered a tip I had read a while ago (but I forgot where I read it) for coming up with ideas. You make a list of ideas, no matter how ridiculous, and just keep listing everything you can think of until you find something that seems to click. The process of making a list is apparently a different part of the brain (from what I can’t remember), and it can lead to more and more ideas.

So I tried that today every time I got stuck on a plot point, and it worked really well! I have to not forget this tip again!

***

I noticed that my creativity again started waning after about 3 hours, but I had to cook dinner anyway so I took a break and went back to writing after cooking (since I had to wait for the pressure cooker to finish cooking). Then I wrote after dinner, so in all I had three separate sessions.

I found that it was easier to write in the late evening, but my ankles and back were getting sore from working at my standing desk, so I decided to quit at about 7 hours total of writing work. Not bad, I think.

I ended up really flying as I was plotting today—much faster than the last several days, possibly because of the trick of making lists when I needed to come up with ideas, possibly because today I didn’t have so many health problems keeping me from writing for long hours.

Mini-scenes plotted so far: 147
Time spent writing: 7 hours, 15 minutes
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 40 minutes

My takeaway for today: When I need ideas for a plot point, start listing everything I can think of.

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