My morning routine is fairly straightforward and unchanging. I wake up around 4 or 5 (no alarm, I’m an early bird. Or a crazy bird, depending on your feelings toward morning) and shuffle into my purple writing library and turn on the computer. I pet my sleepy dog, who has managed to compact himself into half he apparant size in order to sleep on the comfy reading armchair. I go make the first of many cups of hot black tea with milk. I look out the window at the one bright star that hovers over my neighbor’s single tall pine tree.

And then I get to work. Sometimes I unplug the wifi. Sometimes I evict Charlie from the armchair and write curled up under a blanket.

Today I roasted a squash.

Just a small one — an organic Delicata squash I picked up at the natural food store last weekend. [Sidenote: I highly recommend this variety to any fellow winter squash-lovers out there, especially those living in a household otherwise inhospitable to squash. They are the perfect size for one person, and you can easily slice them into "fries" and bake them, skin on, with a few sprays of olive oil and sprinkle of salt. Yum!]

I was procrastinating, you see. I’d just gotten to a scene in the book I’m drafting that needs to be a sort of turning point where one character makes a hard decision. I know what I want her to do. But a story needs more than just authorial intent. I needed to understand why she would do what she did.

One of the dangers of being a more plot-first type of writer (as I am) is that you can easily fall into the trap of treating your characters like puppets, dancing them through the motions of the plot points you want them to follow.

But that’s not a story (to use my personal terminology). Story requires character as well as plot — the characters need to have believable reasons for doing what they do. Motivations. They need to be protagonists, not puppets.

And I could tell that even though I knew what I wanted to have happen, I wasn’t as sure about why. So I baked a squash, and petted my dog, and drank tea (not all at once. Well, the tea-drinking was relatively continuous).

I also read this post by the wise and talented R L LaFevers on the value of time for thinking, stewing and fermenting, when pursuing creative work.

I’m still stewing on this particular scene, but hopefully I will find my way to the guts of the character motivations if I keep searching.

And in the meantime, I have some crispy, sweet, salty delicious squash to eat. Nom!

How about you all? Do you need breaks for thinking time? How do you distinguish between procrastination and necessary stewing time?

Tags: poison maid, writing