The writing process is something that everyone has to figure out for themselves. For me, as a computer professional by day, it turns out that handwritten index cards are the best way to flesh out a scene list or outline. Part of this may be age, but I spend so much time with computers that outlining manually with cards allows me be more creative. There is something "real" about physically writing on cards/

I thought I would describe my experience working with index cards, as I am starting my first novel and am excited to see how using index cards speeds my process.

I wrote out a scene list a few days ago, with four early scenes as follows:

• A visitor brings rumors of people mysteriously disappearing in other communities.
• The protagonist is on top of a tower in the evening and sees the lights of distant villages go out.
• The protagonist's father and community defenders travel west to investigate.
• One member of the expedition returns with horrible news, but no knowledge of what happened to the others.

The idea is that a problem is introduced and then quickly escalates to the point where the protagonist has to act. With a word processor, I have to think about what I want to do, how I want the story to flow, but with index cards, I can jumble things around quickly and repeatedly to see if something I did NOT think of stands out. I have reordered scenes numerous times and found some interesting combinations. The current order of the four scenes is:

• A visitor brings rumors of people mysteriously disappearing in other communities.
• The protagonist's father and community defenders travel west to investigate.
• The protagonist is on top of a tower in the evening and sees the lights of distant villages go out.
• One member of the expedition returns with some horrible news, but no knowledge of what happened to the others.

I love the extra tension that the scenes create in this order.  Part of the creative process is changing order, and these scenes might end up as flashbacks later in the book or dropped entirely, but that is a subject for a different post.