Last night I stopped looking at cute cat pictures and actually wrote. Me and words: reunited, and it feels so good!
Accomplished:
– Revision of my MbM picture book. I shoe-horned in a subplot, and like Cinderella’s glass slipper, it was a perfect fit once everything settled.
– Envisioned two brief scenes and came up with awesome names for my plot bunny, to be referred to as The Killers, as the story’s genesis came from a song lyric of theirs. Some people sing in the shower. I write in my head.
– Researched names for the main character using this awesomeness: www.languageisavirus.com/
Still Pondering:
– What the writerly equivalent is to singing into a hairbrush
– How to trust my dear readers with character names and titles. I don’t want them to be stolen!
– When being cute becomes too cute.
Britt Leigh 
RE: How to trust my dear readers with character names and titles. I don’t want them to be stolen!
This is an interesting issue. Being one of your readers, if not a “dear” reader, I can say I’d never *intentionally* steal anything from you — character, title, or other details. However, the problem comes from the unintentional. Let’s say I read a great character name in your story and bury it in my subconscious. Years later, I’m searching for a character name of my own, and after sifting through some gray matter, my mind’s eye uncovers that long-buried perfect name. I have no memory of having read it before, so naturally consider it my own creation. I use it in a story, and before I can scream “Unintentional plagiarism!”, you’re hauling me into court for stealing your intellectual property.
If you can figure out a way to avoid this scenario, short of some sort of brain implant, please let me know, for I would never want to steal from such a creative mind as you! That’s the problem with your being so talented — no one would *want* to steal from an uninspired piece of writing!
Great that you’re writing again.
RE: – I shoe-horned in a subplot, and like Cinderella’s glass slipper, it was a perfect fit once everything settled.
Doesn’t it feel good when that happens? I love those moments of discovery when I write.
The writerly equivalent to singing into a hairbrush is probably singing the text of Madeleine to tunes of several iambic-tetrametered songs on one’s nannying charges’ French-music CD.
Or is that just me?