Several of you good people, many of you better scriveners than I am, have asked me what my writing methodology is. I've always been a fiction reader, mysteries especially. So that's a pleasant after-dinner evening for me. I sip wine and read.
Every once in a while a plot or character idea occurs to me and I jot it down in a standard College Rule notebook. Random notes, unorganized, uncoordinated.
Then, when I have time, it's laptop time. I look at my notebook - - arrows, cross-outs, a phrase that I can't remember what it's about. And try to organize, prioritize, work the stuff into the general mental outline that I'm trying to follow.
It pleases me when a character goes off track, when a measured plot line meanders away from me. But I try to eventually corral it all into the original story profile. When I simply can't, I adjust. What was that movie line … "Print the legend."
One embarrassing aside. I'm such a terrible speller that Spell Check often can't save me. And sometimes I can't even stumble close enough to find the word in Dictionary. It's rather sad, isn't it, that I have to use Google to find the correct spelling.