While on the plane flying to Hawaii, I jotted notes for a new project as I reread highlighted bits from
EMOTIONAL STRUCTURE: CREATING THE STORY BENEATH THE PLOT by Peter Dunne.

And I finally, finally understood what writers mean when they say they have to know the ending
before they can write the story.
I always thought knowing the ending meant I had to know the "plot" ending, the action ending,
and I never understood how writers already knew whether their books would end with a car chase or picnic in the park.

From WORD PAINTING by Rebecca McClanahan:
When Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim was asked about his creative process, he replied, "If you asked me to write a love song tonight, I’d have a lot of trouble.  But if you tell me to write a love song about a girl with a red dress who goes into a bar and is on her fifth martini and is falling off her chair, that’s a lot easier, and it makes me free to say anything I want."  As we’ve already noted, it’s hard to write effectively about a large abstract subject – grief or anger or love – without first "sweating the small stuff."

I’ve come to the realization that I need to sweat the small stuff 
a bit more before continuing to draft my new project.
I don’t know enough truths about the characters and their lives.
Yet.

So it’s off to my notebook for further discovery . . . 

I’m curious about the rest of you:
how do you know when you know enough about your story to begin writing?

From Anne Lamott’s BIRD BY BIRD:

It [listening to your broccoli] means, of course, that when you don’t know what to do,
when you don’t know whether your character would do this or that, you get quiet
and try to hear that still small voice inside.  It will tell you what to do.  The problem is
that so many of us lost access to our broccoli when we were children.  When we
listened to our intuition when we were small and then told the grown-ups what we
believed to be true, we were often either corrected, ridiculed, or punished.  
God forbid you should have your own opinions or perceptions — better to have head lice.

I realized yesterday that I am, indeed, listening to my broccoli.
I don’t yet have an entire first chapter of my new project,
but I’m taking my time with what I have written and, so far, love it.

Every book I’ve written has followed a different process,
and I’m hoping this one will be slow, steady, and broccoli-guided.

                                                image from morguefiles.com

And it just so happens broccoli is my favorite vegetable.