AUTHORING AN ACT OF SPRING CLEANING

No one will ever dispute that it's a great idea for authors to have a place to jot down notes when something inspiring occurs. It might be a character name, phrase, or story idea. It might happen when you're in bed half asleep, eating dinner at your friend's house, or while watching the news. Over time, though, this collection can become cluttered, making it impossible to locate something when needed. In my case, I accumulated 13 notebooks, several Word and text files on my computer, and virtual notes taken on my cellphone.

It was high time to do some spring cleaning and consolidate all of those notations into a single Word document. As of this post, that file has reached 107 pages (18K words), with 6 more notebooks to sort through.

One of the niceties of this spring cleaning is to reacquaint me with past ideas and find real gems along the way to help with current projects. One such gem I came across will help complete Act 3 of Bloodshed (book 3 of the 11:34 series) and begin Act 1 of Revelation (book 4 of the 11:34 series).

Another important purpose is to make everything easy to find. It is broken down into chapters and subchapters. A simple search within this single document quickly finds those important tidbits in a pinch. The days of sorting through multiple platforms trying to find something handwritten years ago are over.

So far, I have gathered 23 new Test of Mettle ideas. Some of these include fully developed ideas that trace back to actual news events or history, while others are just a line or two. These alone might be enough to create a novella or two. In a way, it was like finding loose change between the couch cushions or a twenty-dollar bill in the wash.