February 22, 2006

A year ago when I was writing The Rest Falls Away, I decided to make a collage about the book.

Since at that time, I was one of those people who wrote by the seat of her pants (amazing how a contract offer and a deadline can change that!), I never really knew what was going to happen until I sat down to write. Literally. So, creating a collage was a way to help flesh out characters and plots, and a way to give my muse a kick in the patootie.

Jennifer Crusie, one of my favorite authors and a fantastic mentor for new writers, has often said she believes that storytellers have every single story locked away somewhere in his or her subconscious: every detail, every character, scene, etc., packed away somewhere in our brains, just ready to be discovered. She creates collages to help unlock that subconscious knowledge, and I took a page from her book and decided to try it.

So, a year ago, I made this collage.

So here’s where the woo-woo music comes in.

I made the collage, finished the book, hung the collage on my office wall (where it still is) and stopped looking at it. Sold the book. Wrote the synopsis for the second book in the series, which of course continues with the same characters in the first book.

I’ve pretty much just glanced at the collage during this process; not really looked at it (except when I needed inspiration for a particular character, then I would gaze at the guy in the upper left hand corner…)

Anyway, so here I am, more than two-thirds of the way through the second book. And the topic of collages comes up on the Wet Noodle Posse loop, where I hang out much too often each day. So I decide to post mine (as the others are doing), and lo and behold, I take a really good look at it.

And I notice, for the first time since I made the collage, a small image that I pasted on there. Not for any particular reason that I remember. And as I look at it, I realize that that image belongs in the scene I was in the middle of writing at that very moment.

Apparently, my subconscious had been unlocked a year ago, and I just realized it.

Isn’t the creative mind a wonderful thing?