What most of you probably want to hear about is what I’m writing.
But what I’m writing has to stay covered. As soon as I let it out, it hardens.
Not to be vague, when I poke and poke at an idea, spinning something out, writing a scene, drawing a thread, etc., it stays ‘soft’ in my head. Oh, Random might do this. Hector should say that. Elegy sticks her nose around here. But they might not, and there’s no mental cost to expanding, exploring, or smushing.
But the second I tell someone any of that, the story ideas ‘harden.’ Now someone else knows I was thinking Random should do this or Mara that. Since most of my ideas are just play for me, they don’t go anywhere, and they don’t harden into things. If they do, they get moved about a little, which is more difficult if the idea already has some form. I like my little forms. I don’t like manipulating them excessively.
So, like dough in the fridge, I keep my plot nibbits and threads in a box in my machine, where they bubble, blorp, and may do something. I actually tried doing it the other way, but that didn’t work. All writing crashed to a halt.