Everyone has a list in their head of what they feel to be the rules of writing. You know, things like:

• Try and avoid naming main characters with similar names. For instance, Max and Mackenzie are not the best names for your two female leads.
• Adverbs are the spawn of Hades and should only be used to give homes to lonely orphans and willingly help old ladies cross streets because that’s their only means of redemption.
• Show, don’t tell, unless you’re worried about overwriting, then by all means slam that door in my face.
• A passive sentence should not be written. Ever. Under any circumstances. Unless you’re Yoda. Then passive you must be. For the Jedi it is their way.

Ahem. Stopping now. Apparently I’m still breaking my rule >.
So…post from earlier is gone. I can’t ubreak my rule, but I can admit I made the mistake and move on, deleting any hard evidence in the process. Because really, I had a brilliant revelation tihs weekend and that’s more important ^_^

I’ve been letting my new shiny roll around in the back of my head for just over a week now. I just realized I can pinpoint the exact day I had the idea (February 17, btw), and that kind of makes me sad. Only because of the point of reference I’m using. Anyway.

Part of the problem I had with the new idea is my two main female characters’ names. They come from different stories and so it was never an issue before. But if I put them in the same book, something tells me people will start getting Max and Mackenzie confused (see how I tied it all back in? I didn’t think I was going to be able to do that :-P).

Which bummed me because I’m kind of attached to both names. And yesterday I had an epiphane. I knew how to fix it. Kind of a long story behind why I call her Max, but as of yesterday, her name is Rae. Which gives her an awesome backstory I absolutely love. This is one of my favorite parts of the writing process: when loose ideas in my skull start to roll together into a cohesive rubberband ball and I can picture how all the puzzle pieces are mostly going to fit.

And today…I’m outlining shiny. Well, sort of. It’s not so much an outline as a series of notes about what kind of evidence would be needed to fake a conspiracy by the Catholic church. But not a good fake. Not like Da Vinci Code kind of stuff. The kind of fake where someone sees through it after they’ve stared at it for long enough.

Kind of like the first time you watch The Matrix, it’s awesome and beautiful eye candy, and the second time you realize that Keanu Reeves is just a stage name for Pinnochio. That’s the kind of conspiracy I want in my book ^_^

/tanget
#MoreBrokenRules