A Tale of Two Roadtrips

Back in April we took a little roadtrip. And as we usually do, we spent the time on the road brainstorming. We came up with a doozy of a character moment for someone’s backstory. It’s really quite a shocking thing. So shocking that at first we weren’t sure we wanted to commit to it. Once it was shakily noted down, we set it aside. (The writing was shaky because we were in a moving car, not because the idea itself was that outré.) We walked around the city a bit, attended a phenomenal concert, and the next morning we found a place with fantastic crepes. In short, we pretended we weren’t writers.

We picked the idea up again on the drive home and found that, yep, that terrible thing is indeed what happened in this person’s past. By not talking about it for a while we were each able to get used to it on our own, and all on its own it became the obvious answer.

More recently we took a day trip, and we barely talked about our work at all. Part of that was because the weather was wretched and Kent needed to really concentrate on not driving us into a ditch. But mostly it was just time for us to have some adventures unrelated to the current project. Sometimes a writer needs to soak up new experiences to give the ol’ creativity engine something to work with. (And maybe there was a touch of still being a bit stunned from the last big idea.)

A good writing partner is someone who is ready for novel adventures when you are. And also someone who shares a taste in funky lamps for the auxiliary writing cave.