Let's Start at the Very Beginning

It starts with an idea.

That's the easy part.  Something will leap out and grab me:  a stroll on Newport's Cliff Walk, a line from a Dixie Chicks song, a jumbled dream.  In this case, it was the idea of writing a Cinderella story set in Regency times.  A real Cinderella story, with a poor relation heroine named Eleanor, a mean aunt, and 2 obnoxious cousins.  Then the handsome earl comes along, in disguise, because he wants to survey the estate he's only recently inherited, without any fuss.  And - well, you know the end of the story.  Beautiful girl marries handsome nobleman, they live happily ever after, the end.

And it starts with notes.  Lots and lots of notes.  Ideas.  Modification of ideas.  Character sketches.  Fragments of scenes.  Lists of scenes.  And in there, some startling changes.  Like, what if the story's set in Victorian England, instead?  And what if Eleanor, if still a poor relation, traveled widely with her father and is cosmopolitan and sophisticated as a result?  And if Christopher, the earl, actually teaches math at Cambridge?  Never mind that I'm lousy at math, and that I don't know anything about astronomy, his other avocation.  That's what research is for.  But how did all the rest of this happens?

Something happens when I put pen to paper.  It's as if there's a direct connection from my brain to my hand, and I find myself writing things I never expected.  Some of it's conscious, as when I decided that it was too easy to make the aunt mean; she is merely self-centered, a little silly, and a tad malicious, instead.  Some of it came from nowhere.  If Christopher was sickly as a child, maybe he's more slightly built than some of my characters?  Wrong.  Christopher told me he rows and gave me the image to go with that news.  Instantly he became a broad-shouldered hunk with thick, russet-colored hair.  Much more appealing.

Then there's the change in setting, to Victorian times.  That means research.  I'm knowledgeable about the Regency, as well as the clipper ship era in the 1840's, and America's Gilded Age.  I love research, though, and working at a library I can get books on just about any subject I want.  I just have to be careful not to overwhelm myself, because I don't have all the time in the world.  Darn.

Finally there are the 3 not-so-obnoxious cousins - yes, 3, not 2 - who really are pretty much okay to Eleanor.  Still, she is a poor relation, and Christopher is still a handsome nobleman, and maybe there's a glass slipper...

Maybe.  I doubt it, but at this point I don't know for sure what's going to happen.  All I know is that I just keep writing notes.  After all, that's what it starts with.