Just got back from a work event that had me staying at a hotel for a few days. It’s a festival-type event that my company puts on, and it requires a lot of hours from a lot of different departments. Many of the people working it like to hang out after — either at the hotel bar or the local haunts. Me? I couldn’t wait to head to the supermarket my first night there and stock up on some groceries.

I got myself the stuff I usually don’t buy at home because, well, no one at my house likes it: A box of Wheaties, cans of spinach, particular TV dinners, etc. I also got a pack of notepads and pens for writing.

I hit a snag on my WIP, a plot problem, and what’s been happening is, I’ve been opening up Scrivener and jotting down some notes here and there, attempting to make fixes only to end up not liking them, deleting them OR making more notes elsewhere. In the end, I’m a bit more confused than when I started trying to pick at this knot I’ve made of my story. So anyway, when I saw the notepads, I got a little excited. I figured, with all the downtime, it might be a good time to just write shit down — anything that came to mind. You know, give my ‘creativity’ a different outlet.

In the end, I didn’t get much actual writing in my WIP done. But I did manage to fill one and a half notepads. And from my chicken scratch, cross-outs, arrow, circles, underlines and asterisks, I’ve actually figured some important stuff out. I’ve also come to remember that I have absolutely horrible penmanship.