Post-it™ Notes and Beading

I’m giving a baby shower. I’m cleaning, cooking, planning as you do when giving a party. And it seems that the thing that is worrying me most is the forgetting something. My solution is Post-it™ notes. Right now, there is an explosion of Post-it™ notes throughout my house. And, that’s OK.

I use the Post-it™ notes in my writing. I use them to remember details, flag problems, add details, remind myself of something.

Another thought…years ago, at a writer’s conference, one of the speakers, Rebecca Winters, explained her method of getting detail in her stories. She said to bead the details in after you have the skeleton of the story down. I have held that image in my head, for all these years, which have been many.

It makes me sad how many years. That was only the second conference I’d ever been to-1994-I think. I won the Golden Pen contest that year and really thought I would have a novel published by now. That didn’t happen, but I’m still trying. And that’s what counts.

Of course, between then and now, so much has happened—many a stumbling block and a few derails, but I’m still writing. More importantly, I’m still beading.

Between Winter’s description and something I read in this month’s Writer’s Digest (also in a book, Page After Page, by the same author. I read the book in 2004 and love, love, loved it. Every writer needs to read it. It is on my list of favorite writing books) Stretch Your Creativity by Heather Sellers, I have found a description of the way I write. And...it’s ok I write the way I do. It is just my particular way. Not the most efficient, I’d say, but maybe, the way my mind has to work.

What it is, is beadwork. I like that. Beading a story.