It's J-day in the 2014 A to Z Blogging Challenge.
Seems like everybody has a junk drawer; a place to put the detritus of life that accumulates over time and doesn't necessarily go with anything else. So it ends up in a drawer. Here's our junk drawer:
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It's in our kitchen, and among other things, it contains an extra door-stopper, some felt pads, slides, tape, various nails and screws, pencils, a cigar-cutter, a paint swatch, lanyard, etc, etc. Every so often, we might look through it and try to organize it, but it's so far down on our priority list that we're lucky if we get to it once a year.
A writer's mind can often be like a junk drawer. It's full of bits of plot, characters, scenes that you haven't found a home for yet and don't really fit anywhere else. So they're stored in the junk drawer of your mind, waiting for a chance to be put to use. But this junk drawer is helpful. It's necessary. Every once in a while, when you're looking for just the right word or scenario or memory to cull, there it is, waiting for you in that mental junk drawer, looking for a good home.
Haha, we have a junk drawer, too! Do you use Scrivener? I've heard it's great for organizing that mental "junk drawer." I don't have the energy to learn it, so I use the Notes feature in Word to note what day of the week it is throughout the book and put a bunch of notes about characters at the bottom of my WIP.
ReplyDeleteVisiting from the main A to Z Blog page. Great to meet you!
Stephanie Faris
http://stephie5741.blogspot.com
Hi Stephanie - thanks for the tips! I didn't realize Word has a notes feature. That would come in handy. I don't use Scrivener, but I've heard good things about it, and want to look into it at some point.
DeleteThanks for stopping by!
I don't store anything in the junk drawer of my mind. It's a black hole. Plot, theme, and characters go in, but nothing comes out. I have to trust all of that to my notebooks, or to my partner's limitless and immaculate junk drawer mind.
ReplyDeleteI'm so jealous.