Lucy is at the Beginning Again! @LucyBurdette #writing

 LUCY BURDETTE: Albert Einstein was once asked how he worked and was said to have answered “I grope.” That feels so familiar! I don’t know if all writers are like this, but I’m always searching for a new approach to getting good words written a little faster. My ears perked up a couple of months ago when Julia mentioned a session she’d had with a mutual writer friend, Jessie Crockett, a.k.a., Jessica Ellicott. She developed a system for brainstorming that worked to provide a book skeleton for even the most devoted pantsers. (A.k.a. those of us who try to write a book without an outline. The keepers of the black hole...)

This is for a different book, but you get the picture!

The tools for this project were simple: sticky notes, different colors for each point of view. Plus a big whiteboard. (Jessie wears headphones and dictates most of her own writing.) She asked me what I knew about the book so far. It wasn’t a lot. I knew exactly how it would open, what Hayley was going to get involved in. I knew that some of it would take place up the Keys in Big Pine Key. I knew there was a cold case. Jessie madly wrote possible scenes down on the stickies and pulled all kinds of information out of me that I didn’t know was there. Because they were on stickies, they could easily be moved around into better timelines. My writing pals Ang and Chris were there for the zoom session and had lots of good ideas, too.

Chris plotting her book

Here's a snippet from that opening chapter (no name for the book yet:)

I scrolled through my stuffed inbox, deleting all the messages from spam to junk to ‘sat on it too long to answer’. I paused over one email that arrived the night before from a name and address that I did not recognize. As my finger hovered over the delete key, the alluring subject line made me pause: Hemingway’s toxic love and an old story. I couldn’t think what kind of clever angle this spam might hold, so I opened it up to see.

Dear Ms. Snow, you don’t know me, and I apologize for intruding into your inbox. I have read a lot about you, both your restaurant criticism and your crime solving. I am hoping to interest you in talking with me, at your convenience of course. 

Below this introduction was pasted a screenshot of a yellowed newspaper clipping.

Monroe County Sheriff’s Department Investigates Report of Missing Woman. May 13, 1978. A 22-year-old woman approached the Sheriff's Department reporting that the friend she had traveled with several months ago from Michigan to the Florida Keys has disappeared. Deputies interviewed all available witnesses and investigated the area where the alleged victim was staying with her friend. There was no sign of criminal activity, although the alleged victim had been living in a commune-type encampment which was subsequently evacuated by the Sheriff’s Department. Several people familiar with the situation reported that the missing woman had been restless and eager to leave the Keys.

“I was the one who reported Veronica missing,” the email continued. “As you can read between the lines, the authorities brushed me off, insisting that she’d left the area of her own volution. But she never turned up in Michigan after I went back home, nor have I heard from her since. I even hired a private investigator. His trail ran ice cold once he hit the Keys.

You've had some experience solving mysteries and I’m hoping that you might help me look into this one.

LUCY AGAIN: One of the reasons that I think Jessie's system works is it doesn't give your brain a chance to say NO NO NO. And that keeps the ideas and possibilities flowing. I've invited Jessie to blog about plotting in January, but meanwhile, do you have ideas for keeping the creative juices flowing?

My stickies after Lottie got involved