How I write.

I love magazines.

The old-fashioned hold in your hands, roll up and stick in a purse, ink smudges all over fingers kind. My addiction began with Highlights. Then there was Seventeen that published short stories by Joyce Carol Oates and Jodi Picoult alongside the best back to school clothes. I embraced my inner edginess with Sassy, and now Bella Grace and Breathe are scattered through the surfaces of my house.

This is how I write.

I forage for images, moments, inspiration, ripping out pages and tossing them in a silver mesh bin on my desk along with my own iPhone pictures extracted with a handheld printer. When it’s time to write, I grab handfuls and piece them together like a puzzle. Sometimes I already have the inkling of a story, and the images flesh out that inkling. Other times, I wait for something to make sense.

So, the picture above is my novel, or at least the novel to come.

It’s a mess right now occupying the space of a person at my dining table. I’ll take notes tomorrow. Outline. Invent names for people and places. Try to make sense of an idea that’s been rattling around my head for some time paired with this pile. It’s sort of wonderful, the moments before the novel is set and stone when anything could happen in the pages I write. Literally, anything.