Context

The Ginger Ale Games are over. (I won.)

I woke this morning in a cold panic. I didn’t have enough time to get everything done before Odyssey as it was; how can I recover from losing an entire day? So I made a couple of phone calls, canceled two days of work I’d agreed to do – and suddenly I’m a day ahead!

Several things on my to-do list are fairly sedentary tasks, so I managed to pick away at those yesterday. One important task: transfer some of my story ideas from my idea file (okay, file is a very optimistic name for a shoebox of index cards) to an idea document so that I don’t have to lug every single scrap of paper I own to this workshop. I found myself mystified by some of these so-called ideas. Some are full paragraphs. One has a sketch, a map, and a diagram – and I have no idea what any of those represent. One card reads: “you never know when you might find a dead body in a restroom stall.” Well, wise words, I’m sure. Another reads: “lack of acetylcholine makes it difficult to filter out irrelevant sounds and other sensory distractions.” Okay, at least that makes a little sense. It’s not a story, by any means, but it makes sense. So much of this is based on my thinking at the time. Context is crucial. I suppose it would be fun to develop a character who cautiously pushed open restroom stall doors, just in case a dead body sprawled on the other side (in fact my mind is busily picking at the idea right now) … but what was I thinking when I wrote that card? It’s as foggy to me as “Mist” was the other day. Context. That’s what I need.