From Blog Entries to Book Chapters

I've been distracted lately by a story that's running on a loop in my head. I've been writing down bits and pieces as they've come, most notably at 2 in the morning after an unexpected thunder clap awoke both my body and my literary creativity. The story is big--not "War and Peace" big, but sprawling enough that it deserves more than a few pages on blogspot. With details of the plot(s) and characters coming not steadily but more like Terence Malick's film career--a lot at once, then nothing, then a lot at once--I needed a way of organizing the information so that it stopped being sporadic notes on yellow pads but instead becomes a coherent work of fiction. I stumbled upon a writing guru who preaches the gospel of "snowflake" writing. We're all well aware that most gurus of this sort are merely re-channeling their own mediocrities, with the common knock against them being that "If they were that good at it, they wouldn't be writing a book telling me how to do it." Fair enough, but explanation is an art in its own right. The basic concept of this method is that you start small. Step 1 requires writing a sentence that gives the gist of the story. Step 2 expands that one sentence by breaking it out into 5 separate parts. So now you have five sentences. You see where he's going with this? Eventually, you end up with a novel.

Will it work? I have no idea. But it has been successful already in getting me to grapple with some details without going through an outline, which have just never worked for me. Some of the issues are big. The plot involves a living person--not famous, but Google-able. How much do I need to tweak the story/character bio in order to maintain the ability to write whatever the hell I want? Do I allow her to remain Serbian? It's great for the historical context it provides, but potentially bad for the whole write-about-what-you-know thing. I did get a master's degree in Nationalism Studies, but, believe it or nor, the entire program wasn't merely broken down into Yugoslavian Nationalism I and II. The points where historic fact and figures interact with fictional characters indeed pose problems. All of which means that I'm still stuck on step 2.