The writing process is different and varied between writers and among different books. Some of us are planners, meaning we outline or use index cards or plot boards or any variety of plotting tools to find the road map for our story before we writer. Some are what we call pantsters (as in writing by the seat of your pants,) meaning we just start writing and figure out stuff blindly as the story unfolds before us. And still other are a mixture of both. You can also have the same MO for four books and then suddenly what has always worked doesn’t. It’s perplexing, but most of us writers have multiple tools in our repertoire so that we’re prepared for these issues. But no matter how we tackle our actual writing, most of us (dare I say all of us) brainstorm. We might not go about it in the same ways, but the what if tickles all of us.

For me this is often my favorite part, or at least one of my favorite parts. This is before I’ve written anything. Everything in the story still exists solely in my mind (meaning I haven’t yet had time to mess it up!) And the possibilities are endless. There are a ton of brainstorming methods and I use a variety on any one book. I do preliminary character work and digging around with my characters usually brings some plot issues to light. I love to play with office supplies – post-it notes, markers, index cards, fancy pens – and these can come in handy when putting together a story. But my absolute favorite way to brainstorm is with other writers.

I’ve done big brainstorming weekends where a group of us pack up and head somewhere (usually the beach) and we do nothing but brainstorm and write and talk writing and eat chocolate for a couple of days. And it’s just heaven. There is nothing more invigorating than to spend time with my writer buds and discuss story possibilities. It’s a charge to work on their books too, really gets the juices flowing. Besides you never feel more brilliant, as a writer, than when you’re working on a friend’s book – that’s when all your great ideas come out. At least that’s the truth for me, it’s like when I’m working on someone else’s book I have more insight, more creativity. I think this has something to do with perspective, but that’s a whole ‘nother blog. But the potential in that initial kernel of an idea is heady and addictive (probably why I have 8, yes 8 new ideas I’m playing with right now). There’s so much to play with. What if I changed the time period? What if he wasn’t the villain, what if he was the hero? What if the heroine had this job? What if the hero was obsessed with this? Or that? The possibilities, as they say, are endless.

But we can’t escape our day-to-day lives every time we need to work on a new book. So we have brainstorming days where we get together and do what we do on our retreats, but in a shrink-wrapped kind of way. We talk faster, we take turns, we do chunks of the book rather than the whole thing or work on one single problematic issue.

Then there’s the emergency phone call or email. Just a quick shout-out for help when you’re stuck on a scene or a plot point or a research detail. Writer buds are the absolute best and I couldn’t write without mine.

So how about you? Are you close to your work friends? Do you have your go-to people whenever you have a problem that needs working out?