I was talking with Andrew last night about the Monolith Press editorial calendar for 2009. As we planned out our release and drop dead dates, the subject turned to the fiction project I wanted to do in 2008, but never finished.
"The plan is to [REDACTED]," I said, "but I don't know which one I'll start on first." I thought for a second. "Probably [THING I'M REALLY EXCITED TO WRITE.]"
"Good idea," Andrew said. He asked me what was going on with a story that I once had a great deal of enthusiasm for, but haven't made any progress on in months.
"I made two huge mistakes with that," I said. "First, I didn't realize until I was almost ten thousand words into it that it can't be a first person narrative, because it's way too limiting for what the story needs. Second, I didn't outline it before hand, I just had a basic idea for where I wanted it to go, and tried to write it by the seat of my pants. It was really stupid to do it that way, but I learned a valuable lesson from the experience: I need to work from an outline, because when I do, I'm connecting the dots instead of assembling a jigsaw puzzle."
"That makes a lot of s—" he began.
"Wait. I like that. I need to write it down." I opened TextEdit and typed connect the dots instead of assembling a jigsaw puzzle.
"I see what you did there," Andrew said. "You should be a writer."
"Thanks! I'm working on that."
