So I’m mostly unpacked from my big move, except for a few stray boxes, but it’s occurring to me that the most difficult part of doing projects, be it writing a book or unpacking a house, is figuring out the logical order in which to do things.
Take my treadmill, for instance. It has been living at my ex’s house for a few years now, and I was really excited to get it back. On the day I decided I wanted to head downstairs and get some extra steps in, I was disappointed to realize I had no idea where the power cord was. I kept my eyes peeled for a few days, and luckily, because I do my best to group similar things together, I eventually spotted the power cord among some other cords and adapters. I plugged it in. Great! Time to walk, right?
Not quite yet.
The treadmill belt was misaligned from the move. No problem, I would just get the key and fix it.
You guessed it, no idea where the key was. I looked for a few days, and then decided that I couldn’t picture anything I would group it with, so the likelihood of me finding it was very low. But, it was just an Allen wrench, and I had several of those.
None of them fit. Cos that’s how it goes.
As I was in the hardware store looking for the Allen wrench, I saw that there were Imperial sizes and metric sizes, and I had the strong hunch that maybe none of my other wrenches worked even if they looked like they should because it needed a metric key. I bought one set of each anyway, thinking I wanted it to be my very last trip to the store for an Allen wrench, ever. (Disassembling and reassembling my desk already took three trips to the store where I bought a few keys at a time, so you can imagine…)
Success! When I got home, the very first metric wrench that I tried was the one. Jackpot! I’m off and walking, right?
No, now the belt is super out of whack, and I’ve had to reference the website to see which way I should be turning the wrench. The treadmill is in the basement and the computer’s upstairs on the second floor, of course…
Well, you get it. It’s still not right. But it is damn close.
I mention this not because I think my treadmill is inherently interesting, but because writing a novel, for me, is exactly like this. I might think I understand one element of it, but if the sequence of events and the logical cause and effect is not in place, ain’t nobody walking.
Random aside: as I looked for the domino image, I found this blog which looks kind of cool. http://www.howsthenovelcoming.com/
Another random aside. I can’t figure out if there’s an “e” in the word dominoes/dominos. Seems like there should be.
Third random aside: I used to lay out my novels with post-its on the wall, which I gave away to some delightful readers in London because the stickies wouldn’t survive the move. Now that I’m resettled, I have pulled up the program Scapple and decided to do my old sticky note process on the computer. I’m digging it, I’m finding I’m more detailed this way, plus they don’t fall off. But that isn’t to say I’m not still awash in Post Its…
Jordan Castillo Price 