Writing Wednesdays

So I've never been a master of vocabulary. Memorizing the definitions of words has always proved difficult. I'm more of an application kind of person. Show me how it's used, and I should be able to use it correctly in the future (if my brain remembers it).

I am often on Google or Dictionary.com, searching or checking the definitions of words. Most of the time my brain surprises me and it uses words, I rarely use, correctly.

The words and phrases I spend most of my time looking up now are genre definitions (high fantasy, epic fantasy, space opera) and other industry terms (query, shopping, submission).

I finally looked up one of my favorite terms, plot bunny (or plot bunnies as the case may be). I think it sounded cute, but apparently they can be nasty boogers. If you are unfamiliar with the term, plot bunny is essentially a plot that gets into your head and it won't leave you alone until you write it.

If you haven't guessed, this isn't a post about remembering vocab words, it's a post about plot bunnies. :)

For me, like any bunny, these plot bunnies multiply, quickly. It gets to the point that I am inundated with these bunnies to the point I can't write anything.

To battle this, I knocked out a few queries so that these plot bunnies can relax and let me focus on the WIP at hand (52,000 words and I reached the climax...whoops).

This is helpful in several ways, if I do come back to one of those bunnies, I can (hopefully) recall the plot ideas, AND I have a rough draft of a query - a query that didn't have to be whittled down from the many thousands of words MS.

This leads to the advice I read: write your query and synopsis BEFORE your manuscript, and you will be happy. Believe me, I am. This WIP is going better than I thought (though Round 1 of edits is going to be "rewrite/reorganize/edit).

Unlike Raj (from The Big Bang Theory), I like rabbits, I know how to own plot bunnies, and I won't eat the world's supply of lettuce in front of them.