Outline

Okay, I got the outline done at least in large strokes for the cozy mystery. It involved a lot of talking out loud to the computer and then petting the cat, who comes running if I talk out loud.

Also I invented the Bryson Grant, which sends people to travel around the world recording oral history, or in this case, oral mystery. I'm way too tickled about the Bryson Grant. Also, I totally want one!

Mostly I got things done because I was ranting and raving about how happy writing makes me, like happy in a slightly deranged way, like somehow I got cross-wired and writing presses the endorphin button and leans on it. Seriously, it's not normal. And then my friend said, "So what are you writing now?" and I gave the thumbnail, and then said, "But I'm stuck on the outline."

Then I decided I HAD to whack it into shape this weekend, before I get students turning in paper drafts on Monday. I need my road map!

It turns out I was trying to throw everything into the story at once and caused a giant bottleneck. Also I had not worked out exactly why the villain was doing the villainous thing. It's very odd because all the pieces were there, but I'd never drawn those last two tiny lines that connected everything.

This makes me very impatient with myself. GET GOING!

But now I have an outline I can stick to the wall and stare at when I get confused about what's what.

Next I just have to convert the many versions of this thing into...well, nothingness. Delete them, I guess. I should admit right here that I will never delete them. They're full of ideas I'm going to want later. But what I mean is, start over without them. It's a little crazy because there's at least 60K words but it's a mess, different false starts, massive changes to the story, all kinds of junk.

The main character's aunt changes names about a dozen times, for instance.

Now she's Aunt Adelaide.

From that and the Bryson Grant you can deduce not only what book I'm reading but which chapter I'm on. Don't you think Aunt Adelaide was very staid and then had a wild exuberant period and then settled down to become prosperous and respectable?

Never mind that there's a character named Melbourne in the last book. That book's main character misheard everyone's names and gave them the names she heard, so Melbourne's name wasn't actually Melbourne. Also she (the main character) lied about her own name to about the first seventeen people she met in the book, so you're not sure what her name really is until her cousin shows up.

Secretly of course I can never, ever remember characters' names, unless they're also names of towns or cities. There was a Macon in that book too, one of three leads, so to speak. Top billing! Macon was actually his name, though. I guess she heard that one right.

This current main character is named after a color of oil paint, abbreviated to a word I associate with chickpeas, though I'm not sure what language. Probably Spanish since it's on the can, though there's a cognate in German, which I remember from my German host family's daughter's art teacher's son.

That little boy went on and on about Kichererbsen and how they were giggle peas until his mom, possibly to shut him up, told him I was American, after which he sat perfectly still and stared at me wide-eyed until we left, because his father was an American soldier but he'd never met him. Only he was very confused because I wasn't black like his father clearly was, so how could I be American?

Anyway it's from cicer arietinum, the Latin name of chickpeas. Cicer/kicher/ceci and there you go.

Originally my character had all these aunts and siblings, but I got rid of everyone except the one aunt. Not *just* because I couldn't keep anyone straight, but because what an unholy mess! Also a big family made the story implausible.

So I'm pleased with my outline and ready to have this book settle down and become the thing I do every day instead of a big tangled knot of confusion. I can't believe it took this long, but then again our man Orson Scott Card says in How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy (which this isn't) that you're not ready until you're ready and if you write it before you're ready, it'll suck. I may be paraphrasing.

Rosemary & Thyme has me completely excited about the cozy mystery. I feel like staging a denouement in the drawing room over sherry. I feel like drawing maps for the frontispiece!