"It was Halloween in Bellewood, and at eight in the morning everything glittered, covered in a hard frost that had crusted on my windshield and was nearly impossible to get off with the little plastic scraper I’d bought last winter.  I was standing beside my car, pounding at the ice on the windshield and trying to get it to crack, when my neighbor Burt Arthur ambled over.  Burt had moved into the apartment next door to me six months ago, when the previous tenant, Mr. Harper, DIED SOMEHOW.  FIGURE THIS OUT RIGHT NOW.  Since then, SOMETHING ELSE. OKAY."

This is how I write 90% of the time - I do bits and pieces and all-caps stuff that isn't quite worked out yet.  I didn't realize until today how odd this must look to other people until Jessica read this paragraph and snorted so loud half the library was staring at us.  

I do brainstorming like this as well - it's like talking to myself on paper.  And usually my conversations are relatively amusing.

For example:

"Okay.  There is this picture I have, and it’s a baby grim reaper carrying around a scythe and a stuffed bunny.  I am in love. 

Okay so let’s think.  It’s Halloween and this girl goes out trick-or-treating with her thirteen-year-old little brother.  She’s early twenties, I think.  Lucy.  She dresses up as a witch because it’s the easiest costume she can come up with in the shortest time.  She doesn’t really want to go out with her brother.

Anyway, they’re walking around, getting candy from the neighbors, and she sees this toddler-sized kid that is sitting alone on the sidewalk, dressed as a grim reaper.  She decides to ‘keep him.’  He kills people by pointing at them and crying.

She tells her friend about him. 

Problems: her boyfriend.  The baby doesn’t like him.  He’s an ass, anyway.  Lucy has to save the boyfriend several times. 

New romance!  Baby likes him.

Enemy girl – the reaper’s mom? – tries to take him back.  She wants to use him to wreak havoc on the world.  She actually had sex with a real Reaper, and thus gave birth to a reaper baby.  Can tell it’s a reaper baby even when it’s not wearing the robes because of its eyes – when it cries, its eyes go all black like the demons on Supernatural.  Reapers are apparently not supposed to have children, as they’re dead anyway.

Random quote to use - “I dunno, I just like having living souls in my teapot.” – Justin"

As you can see, very little of this actually made it into the story as it stands now.  But it still makes me laugh to read it.  Lol.  All of this was done at the very very very beginning of the original writing of the story.  *Sigh* How things change...

This is the picture that inspired it all.  I've posted it before, but I have since remembered who the artist is.  Her name is Sarah Mensinga, and she is awesome.  Here is her website:

http://www.sarahmensinga.com/