Writerly Things ~ Collage Me, If You Can!

These are a few of my writerly things...

On a recent visit to my friend Andrea Teagan's blog (The Enchanted Writer), I read with pleasure her post "How to Make a Story Inspiration Collage." The basic gist of the project is to make a visual representation of a current work in progress (or WIP) and have it readily visible for when you're writing and feel yourself getting a bit stuck. The instructions are simple and I remember thinking that just going through the process of making the collage would probably stir up all sorts of ideas for your WIP. My next thought was, "Hang on; I totally made one of these for my (as yet unpublished) novel, Bedeviled !

I dunno about y'all but, as I write, I tend to need firm mental images of real-life folks to fill in these sort of abstract characters who're clambering out of my head and onto paper (yes, paper, as I tend to write my first drafts longhand). They're actors, usually, though sometimes they're folks with whom I'm personally acquainted - which isn't to say I'm basing the characters on the folks, just that these are the visuals I've got when I'm writing the characters.

Anyway, at some point that I worked on Bedeviled, I felt myself stall and so I put together a collage which, I must admit, is not as grand as the collage Andrea posted on her site but worked the necessary writerly mojo for me. There are two panels to this collage, which I've scanned and elaborated upon, below. My character's names come first (followed by the names of the dudes I visualize as I write, in parentheses).

Clockwise from the top: Ardos (Thomas Gibson); some random beach, somewhere; Father Gianni (William Hurt); me and my Sis on a wintry Robert Moses Beach, Long Island, NY; Gavin (Gerard Butler); and Mike (Samuel West).

Clockwise from the upper left: Cadzick (John Cusack); me and my Sis on her alma mater's campus (I envision this space as belonging to the chapel in my story); Gabe (Matthew McConaughey); Rafe (my friend, singer-songwriter Tama Waipara); a snippet from some magazine which perfectly summarized the basic themes of the story; a clawed hand belonging to no one in particular...as far as I know.

I've been thinking of Bedeviled as a supernatural thriller for quite some time but, lately, have desired to take it in more of a romantic direction - which is to say, rather than starting with the Main Character's love life at its crisis point (and having very little interaction between her and her fella except for the beginning and end of the tale), I want to tell the same crazy story while also showing the developing relationship between Madeleine (my main chick) and Gavin (her main squeeze). So, yeah; I've a fair bit of revising to do (and then some - what I've got in mind is a gargantuan process which will undoubtedly take me all summer to complete). Am I daunted? Hells, yeah. Can I make it happen? Sho, 'nuff. Probably. (God willing!)