Learning to plot in all the wrong places!

Good morning!

I'm especially jazzed to get my real life work out of the way today so that I can play with my brand new tarot cards!

I can hear some of you sucking in your breath...tarot cards? Me? I'm pretty much the most anti mystical person you're going to meet. So why the shiny new deck of tarot cards?

Well, let me tell you...I spent my Saturday morning with the fine folks of the Mad City Romance Writers group. (Ah , the Middleton Library...you have no idea how much talent you host one Saturday morning a month!) The presentation, which was BRILLIANT, incorporated the use of tarot cards in the process of character building and plotting.

I discovered a couple of things:

1) There's a deck of tarot cards for everyone on the planet. I liked the "Mad Men" Don and Betty Draper-esque 50's deck, but the renaissance kitties were cute, too.

2) There are writers who buy a deck of tarot cards before starting a new book.

3) Whether you believe in the tarot (I don't) or not, using these cards for character building ROCKS!

I managed to outline characters and build a plot for a project that's been rattling around in my head for YEARS, but just hasn't translated to actual words. Now I have an outline, characters, and all that in the span of a two hour meeting!

I found a really pretty, bright colored deck that will inspire me for a couple of projects, I'm sure. Meanwhile, I'm going to go on a quest. If they've got Renaissance Kittens, I'm hoping to find a Rick Springfield or David James Elliott deck.

Now THAT'S what I call inspiration!