Random: Peanut butter on bagels=the worst kind of nasty. Alert the bagel police. Bleh!

Sometime after I get my title, (usually a year+, sometimes sooner) a voice or voices will start talking to me: a word or phrase here and there, just a tantalizing tidbit of personality and voice. But what's the story? Where's the inspiration?

That's the big question. Literally. My characters show up, and a question pops into my head. And the first question engenders the conflict, which tells me what the character wants, and leads the entire story deeper and further, offering snapshots of the other characters and the setting etc. (Nothing goes on paper at this point. Only the title remains written in my notebook. But I will now create a document file and folder for the novel, with a title page only.)

For Life's Too Short, the novel Secret Agent Man is currently subbing, the initial question was: What would it be like to have a Madonna-impersonator as a mom? I'm sure you can see where the conflict might be and how the situations can only deepen from that point on.

From here, the process moves quickly, though in the background, with major and minor characters, setting, and plot all swarming into place and into play.

The back of my mind is a constantly churning pot of plot and story.

My characters show up fully named (first and sometimes last though mostly I research the last names for story reasons), though every rare once in awhile I change them.

Once things are gelling and moving, slamming together, breaking apart, reconfiguring, I get a clear sense of how the story begins, how the story ends, and what the middle will likely contain. Still no writing. Nor do I ever talk about the story to anyone at this stage. I've learned the hard way that is the quickest way to destroy the creative push to write it down.

So, inspiration and continued percolation (not a word until today, I believe, lol). At this point it is about perspiration... on another project.

Because my stories write themselves in my head before I ever commit a word to paper, it is essential that I always am working on something else as well. For me, starting a story too soon (on paper) signals its death knell. I might as well throw out the sparse notes, delete the file, and move on. And I've had to. I have learned to respect the process, in all its weird and wonderful randomness.

So I write and write and write, and revise, and crit, and read, and bug my agent, and obsessively check email. Lather, rinse, repeat. And the urge to get that story on paper grows, and grows, and... you know what they say about anticipation...

And when I can finally stand it no more, and there is time in my schedule, I write. But only the beginning. About 10-15 pages, sometimes less. Just enough to get going. Then I go back to my current project and allow the need to create to build up again. This time, when I move back to the project, I write a synopsis. (I love synopses; I think they're terrific tools)

Now I'm ready to draft. And I do. I edit as I go, not a person able to just vomit onto the page and clean it up later, though that method has been wildly successful for so many. I need to play with the words, to get them just so, in order to move on. Same thing with details, I research every little thing, and I don't use placeholders in the text. I'd be lost without the Internet, and instant access to... say... photos of vintage fabrics and sewing instructions.

And I'm a big believer in procrastination. Kerry Madden had this great quote in her blog a couple of years ago, I think it was by Edith Wharton, about how much time she spent staring into space, and how that was *working* too. Love that, feel that, live that!

My favorite procrastination tools are: LJ, Verla's, and Neopets (in fact, while I was composing this, my youngest neomailed me from her school, lol)

So, what's your inspiration? Do you let your ideas steep? Favorite methods of procrastination?

Tomorrow, scene summary's, Ari's incline, and crit peeps...