A while back, I was over at Jennifer Cruise's blog and she was talking about collaging for a short story she was writing, and it got me thinking... while I was going through all my therapy, I did a bunch of collages that I really enjoyed doing and--most important--provided amazing insight. As I thought about it, I wondered: Would collaging for my books prove to be as insightful?

So, a few weekends ago, I was kid-less and I invited a writer-friend over and we spent the day cannibalizing magazines. She completed an pretty collage about her life. And I collaged for my novel. At the beginning I thought, I was collaging for the one novel I was writing, but it didn't take me long to realize I was collaging for seven novels. As I said in my previous post, this is causing trouble, because it means my attention is terribly scattered.

However, the collaging really brought out something I hadn't realized before, it brought out how little I had characterized the current novel.

It's no wonder I can't write the novel. I don't know who the characters are, or why they're doing what they're doing. For instance, I suddenly realized why I got stuck on the next scene. It's because every time I thought about the new character that came on screen in this scene, I didn't know who she was or what her motivations were. And since I didn't know who she was, I didn't know how the heroine was responding to her, and I didn't know the relationship between the two of them that leads to this confrontation, so there was no way I could write the scene. Duh!

The other thing I hadn't realized was how visual I am. In the process of the cannibalizing the magazines, I cut out many pictures of women. Now that I'm starting to focus on this collage and it's interesting how specific I am about the heroine. Not just any woman will do. Not just any blonde will do. I am very specific about who she will be. When I found her, just looking at her picture brought many things to light about her character, about who she is and what she wants.

So now between the core dump and the collaging, I am finally figuring out who these characters are and I'm getting close to the point where their stories are becoming real to me. I'm really looking forward to that point, because that's the part of writing that's fun, when the story just pours from me.