One of my favorite times of day is 6:45 PM. It is at this point in the day of our quarantine routine when my sons put in a movie and more or less settle down for the day. It is a time of day when we can all be in the same room together, but we don’t all have to be doing the same thing. This is frequently a time when I get work done.

Except that on the particular night I’m going to share with you, I was tired. Not sleepy, per say, but mentally drained in a way that wouldn’t produce quality work. I’ve learned that when you work from home, and everyone else is also ALWAYS home, it simultaneously feels like you are ALWAYS WORKING and NEVER WORKING. Any available pocket of time feels like it should be utilized to cross just one little thing off the to-do list. The ever present awareness of this fact kind of made me crabby, and knew that if I did manage to get into a good flow and was asked to stop to get milk, clean up a spill, restart the movie, fill in any child like request – I’d likely lose my sh-, patience. And yet, I didn’t want to waste the hour and a half of semi-preoccupation the movie time would afford me.

So instead of pulling out my computer or a paper copy of my manuscript in progress, I grabbed a stack of magazine I had been saving specifically for kids’ collaging projects. As I paged through the glossy papered editions of Parents and People, I looked for images and words that connected to the four cousin characters in my novel Close Quarters and also the series as a whole. I looked for people who look as I envisioned my characters to look, for recipes they might make or room styles that might reside in their homes. At the movie played, (Cool Runnings) I browsed and clipped and sorted.

A few days later I arranged and glued the images on large sheets of paper.

I’d like to briefly pause in this line of thinking for a productive tangent.

In June I was supposed to go to Washington, D.C. for a lovely long weekend with my husband. The catalyst for this trip was a one day writing seminar by my favorite author, Maggie Stiefvater. I’ve “met” Maggie twice before, but the opportunity to learn from her for five hours, for only $100, was a dream come true. Add to it some airplane vouchers we had to use thanks to a six-hour delay in Nashville last summer and the trip was nearly free. ENTER COVID.

In place of the in-person seminar Maggie shared over eight hours of recorded videos. (To grab the seminar for yourself, click here.) I haven’t finished them all, yet, but in an early lesson she shared this insight: When you, as a consumer, decide to watch a movie or read a book, we most often make our choice based on a single factor. MOOD. Do we want to laugh or cry? Be scared or comforted by nostalgia? Do we want to think or just lay back and zone out?

I’d never considered this line of thinking as a writer before, but DANG! It is so true! And that’s why Maggie starts with MOOD. She says it should be at the forefront of EVERY DECISION YOU MAKE as a writer.

#winitwednesday secret code word = COMPASS

I took this lesson back to my character vision boards and added character traits in fun colors and fonts. Here is the final result.

I plan to hang these in my writing office for the duration of my first draft. I am hopeful they will remind me of the mood I’m trying to convey… and how those character moods should not only differ from chapter, but also be distinctively recognizable for each character. With any luck it this technique will positively influence the story overall.

So, what’s the take-away? Number one, arts and crafts time is fun. And two, even though I didn’t write a single word in my manuscript that night I was tired/crabby/incapable of actual writing, I feel like I made progress on my story anyway. That night I learned that working doesn’t have to look the same all the time. And finally, MOOD.

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