At the local writers group last Tuesday, we talked about plotting and ideas and fleshing out those ideas, and I "drew" a little picture on my notebook page to "illustrate" what I was saying, which was basically this: if the world I am writing about is the size of a piece of graph paper, then my story method is often to pick one of those squares and write about it. But it is more than just the one square. It is not a random square, for one thing. Part of the fun for me, the challenge, is to pick THE square that illuminates the story the most precisely. The square that shows the blood spatter from the bullet -- not the gun, not the getaway car, but the pattern of the repercussions that will be amplified forever after.

I tend to do this when I blog, too, without necessarily realizing it. The yellow Corvette? That was Sunday. It was the little square of the big page that was our weekend. Greg bought his new wife a bright yellow Corvette convertible. Is that a story? Is it a problem? A solution? It is a trigger, for me, to think through all the decisions that I/we have made, the mistakes, the successes, the path we walk now.

It is a little square. A bright little square, but really a very small one indeed.

Just now: a rejection for "Manassas Magic", from IGMS -- form rejection. Form rejections are particularly hard on the soul, I think. (Although... I suppose they are better than "What on earth are you thinking? Writing involves TALENT, you idiot! Go get a real job!" Which is what I'm usually assuming the editors are writing in response to my work. Optimism is the writer's best friend.)

So breathe and send it out again.