Map It

When I was 11, I watched until my neighbors across the street were gone, then crept into their house and drew the floorplan on a page in my writer's notebook.

I look at the diagram now and wish I'd included enough detail to bring the rooms to life this many years later. Yet I also smile, because the major item of interest on their property didn't require a break-and-entering, and doesn't even require a notation for me to remember it. It's off the page at the upper left, at the alley-end of a fence that ran along their driveway. Each week, the trash cans there held (to my mind) an intriguing number of empty beer bottles.

These days, if I feel stalled while writing a story, I'll draw a map of the setting (a room or workplace or city) and make marks in areas that interest me. When I figure out why they're interesting, the story usually gets going again.