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02/20/2006: Falling With Style


Hello all! I'm writing to you from my long weekend. I've been doing a lot of snorkeling on said weekend. This is a very new skill. Once I'm in the water, I do great, floating around with minimal movement, staring at the pretty fishes, admiring the amazing colors and wondering which ones taste best in lemony sauces. But the transition from standing in three inches of water with a worried look on my face to floating about hungrily, is very very hard for me. I have, in fact, discovered that the only way I really can get myself fully into the water is to fall. I wade out into the water and trip over something. It works GREAT! Serendipity with extra dip.

Sometimes accidents lead to great results. Keep that in mind as you write. You've got an outline. But if something better comes up while you're writing, you should feel free to explore it. Add a character to a scene or subtract one. Fiddle with a transition between scenes or change the order of scenes. You've got time, since it's a spec. Time is your one advantage over the pro writer with a due date and this is one of the ways you can take advantage of it. Maybe your experiment will only end up reminding you why you put things in that order in the outline to begin with, but maybe it will lead to something interesting. Feel free to fall. Sometimes it leads to fish.

Lunch: wasabi peanuts, dried cherries with salt and licorice, chocolate coffee beans and an apple. Eclectic!