At trivia last night, I was stuck on a question about Parks and Recreation. Which two characters from that show, the quizmaster asked, celebrated an annual "Treat Yo Self" day? I love Parks and Rec, so I was pumped to get this one in a snap. And Tom's name popped right into my head.
Yes! Halfway there!
And then, as happens so often at trivia, my brain decided to just block me on remembering Donna. I could picture her. I could hear her and Tom exclaiming in unison, "Treat yo self!" But I had nothing. The song they were playing to count down the time limit got really loud in my head. Nobody else on the team had a clue. I was about to cost us points by blowing what ought to be an easy question for me. The pressure made my brain freeze even harder.
So I just thought, Start writing names. Anything. It's kind of a normal name, right? But not one that's super-popular anymore ...
I wrote down "Brenda."
BZZT. WRONG.
It wasn't Brenda, but ...
Instead of further panic, my mind eased into this you're-on-the-right-track mode. I put the pencil to the answer slip again.
"Donna."
A couple of criteria, making the decision to act instead of giving up, a little luck hitting three of the right six letters, including the final vowel, and bam. I had it. Tom and Donna celebrated Treat Yo Self day every year on Parks and Rec.
Score!
Also at trivia last night, I told my friend Joe about the stab I recently took at starting a new novel. Don't do it, Herb, I thought, you're going to jinx yourself. You're only 3k words in and you have no idea where it's going ...
But I told him anyway.
So this morning, with the day off, I got up and sat at my computer determined to push through a thousand or two words to keep my momentum going. And I when I opened up the file, I saw the handful of chapter titles I'd brainstormed up a few days ago in an attempt to cobble together at least some kind of outline. The title of chapter two kinda sorta meant something in the context of the two-and-a-half scenes I've written on chapter one. But none of the rest of it hung together at all. The half-done scene three needed someplace for the characters to go once it was done, and some reason for them to go there. But where, and what? And then what?
Just write some more chapter titles. Anything. Some place names. Throw some words together.
"The Lower Elder Elvendale."
Awesome. If it's the 'lower' something, what's the 'upper' part of it? Why's the upper part separate from the lower part? Well, if it's a valley, it's got a river, right? And if there's an upper valley and a lower valley, how are they split? Waterfalls. Are the characters going to go up the falls? What are the falls called? I guess there are elves here ...
"Up the Fey Falls."
Then ... they've got to do something at the top of the falls, in the upper valley. I dunno what. But that will get them out of the valley, and then where do they go? It can't just come out of nowhere. It needs to tie into something that's already happened or the story's just a bunch of random wandering.
Well, in scene one, I'd had someone tell about a battle where a famed human warrior cracked the Giant King's skull.
"Chapter VIII: The Giant King's Skull."
Why would they need to revisit the Giant King's skull? Why is it even something they could revisit? And this is all going great, but how do they get from the titles I wrote down for chapters two through five, to being in the Lower Elder Elvendale?
Click.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Click.
A couple of criteria, some essentially random stuff I'd already written, a commitment to write something instead of giving up, and suddenly a crap-ton of story was falling into place. The first two-and-a-half scenes, which I'd had fun writing but felt no certainty would go anywhere, had turned into a story foundation I'm now really excited about. I have actionable ideas for the first eleven or twelve chapters in the book.
And I one-hundred-percent promise you, if I hadn't written "Brenda" down last night, I never would have gotten "Donna." The song would have run out, and those points would be gone.
You can't just sit there and wait for it to come to you, you know?
