It is honestly too hot and uncomfortable to do any “serious” writing, so I’m filling the void with fun.
Writers, especially lazy ones like me, need all the help they can get. Believe me, I’m a huge fan of tools in the writer’s toolbox, the more the better. I’m inspired by pretty little notebooks, pens in peacock and pink, and color-coordinated 3″ x 5″ index cards. I’ve tried spreadsheets, graphs, and time lines. I’m a pantser, but I know my best work does not come from the top of my head; the more it rumbles around, the better. And I’m tactile. I can’t outline, not until after the first draft is complete. I need to see; I need to pick up and move my scenes, which is why color coordination and cards work best for me.
It was in April when I received an email from the BookBaby web site, extolling the virtues of Pinterest as a writing tool. At first, I shook my head. Pinterest?
Now, I am very slow to warm up to anything Internet. I was once an inhabitant of an Orange Bubble social media network, which was hard to navigate. It was by sheer luck that I made any friends there at all. It took me forever to figure out Facebook, and once I had, the format changed, so it took even longer to figure out the new Facebook. And let’s not even talk about Twitter. I get it now, but I was a Twitter bumpkin for a year or so, before careful coaching by one of Twitterati’s most famous felines (@littlefluffycat). On the information superhighway, I’m driving around blind and in the dark, which is both dangerous and stupid.
I’d received an invitation to Pinterest months before, took a quick look, couldn’t figure it out, and beat a hasty retreat. My friends love the place. I like pictures of my favorite things as well as anyone else does; I just couldn’t get into it. Boards? Why?
After the BookBaby article, I gave Pinterest another spin around the block. A light immediately flashed above my head, just like in the cartoons. I could use the pin boards to map out my novels!
What has happened in the last few months (because I’m so busy, who has time to devote more than a minute a week to this project?) is that I’ve created boards for each of the two books I’m working on now, plus the book (Virtually Yours) that has already hit the virtual bookshelf. I’ve populated the boards with the actors I’d love to see play my characters, the settings of the novels, and anything else I can think of.
What I’ve found is that just by visiting my boards, I’m motivated to write. I can see parts of my novels playing out before my eyes. My WIP is not just thousands of random words – which, incidentally, is really hard to keep track of in your head – but the stories I’ve felt a need to tell.
I don’t have hundreds of boards, just twelve. In addition to the writing boards, there is a travel board, one for food, and two for novels I’ve read and/or loved. And a vision board, because I’ve been meaning to do that for years, using photographs and poster board (it’s in my sewing room, waiting for me to buy rubber cement), but just never got around to it.
In case you want to check out my boards:
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