Saturday, August 16, 2008

A day for research

Ahh, the pure luxury of a Saturday in which I have hours and hours of uninterrupted time to write. I'll start out blogging, like a runner stretching before a race. Also, I think it would be beneficial to blog what I intend to accomplish today and check back in this evening to report what I actually accomplished.

Today is dedicated to research. My plan is to hit up my local library with my list of research keywords and see what I turn up. Then I'll head back home and scan Amazon and eBay and AbeBooks until I've got the material I think I need, though I'm sure there will always be more I want or am curious about. Then perhaps I'll watch a few podcast lectures from IU's CogSci dept and attempt to read some online materials I've bookmarked. If I'm very, very productive, I'll start laying my outline notes out in a Google Notebook and arranging sequences. The outline is really the heart of any of my fiction writing. I am an obsessive outliner. If I don't outline, I run into major trouble. And once my outline is sketched out, the actual writing of a given scene/chapter is like filling in the shading of a drawing.

I've chosen tentative chapter titles for the first two chapters. David's chapter is called "All Downhill from Here" and Claire's introductory chapter is to be called "The Uphill Battle". David introduces himself in a whirlwind narrative that whisks you through his life from the age of 9 to the present in which he finds himself at 18 as a Cognitive Sciences student at IU Bloomington, completely bemused with how his life has blown past him and unsure of what his future holds. We erupt into Claire's head in the middle of her daily shift at a small deli/bakery and spend just a few short hours with her. We learn nothing about her past, but everything about her hopes for the future. I'm really excited to get the outlining done so I can lay down these two chapters. I've spent a few days meditating on them and I think they're very close to being fully realized. The next few chapters will be the biggest challenge for me, though, because that's where I'll have to get descriptive about the world of graduate school and cognitive sciences, of which I know nothing. But that's the fun part, the learning.

Keyword search list:
  • Eileen Garrett
  • Edgar Cayce
  • Star Gate
  • Cognitive Sciences
  • Raymond Chandler
  • Remote Viewing

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