How Do You Brainstorm?

I’ll get to that in a moment, first I need to vent. I’m apparently walking in a perpetual fog of oblivion here lately. You know where you’re on autopilot, going through the motions, but aren’t really there. Man, have I just had a what-in-heck-was-I-doing moment.

Just twenty minutes ago, I ran to the bank to deposit some money. Lady gives me back my card and my receipt and I guess here is where I checked out, because somewhere between leaving the bank, getting out of my car and walking inside my house, I’ve lost my bank card.

I SWEAR I had it in my hands when I got out of the car, so it had to happen between the walk from my car to the 30 feet inside to my chaise. Card gone. I retraced my steps, even looking in the freezer because I did stop to get some chicken out to defrost. Nope. Called the bank, just in case. Nope. Poured out my purse. Nope. Looked outside. Nope. Searched the car. Nope. Someone please tell me how that happens? It was 30 freaking feet!

After I get this blog up, I’m going to search again. As the saying goes, right now, if I didn’t have bad luck, I’d have no luck. LOL.

So brainstorming…the idea of this blog hit me yesterday as I was trying to figure out a plot-point for the next book in this series I’m writing. I’m almost done with the first book, and have a small subplot that will lead into the second book. Problem is, I have no reason for the character’s actions, and I really need to figure out what it is before I finish this book and write myself into a corner for the next book. So I got my handy-dandy notebook and pen and started jotting down questions. It got me to thinking on how other people brainstorm.

When I brainstorm by myself, it’s with a paper and pen. Really I don’t know why because it’s nothing I can’t really do in my head, but there is something about seeing “Why is she acting this way?” that helps keep me focused. I may stare at this question for thirty minutes without writing another word, but if I get off track (which is very easy for me) I just look at the question again and think “Why is she acting this way?” And I’m back to thinking about the book.

My brainstorming method seems to be a bunch of jumbled thoughts that if anyone was to take a glance at it, they'd probably send me a worried look and take a cautious step back.

For example, I have “murder” written in block letters, with three underlines, three exclamation points and then circled in a sea of words. Now, of course, murder isn’t going to work, so it is also marked out with a big X. But you see where, I’m going with this. Some random person who glances at my paper, isn’t going to see all the other stuff, he is just going to see the word “murder” jump out at him. This gave me a chuckle last night.

So what is your brainstorming method?

Esme