Organising Your Brain While Singing Under The Sea On Repeat

As we started to progress I quickly realised that the most difficult aspect of this process for me was going to be organising my thoughts. I’d always assumed the ideas for a novel were the hard part, but once the main idea was lodged it was organising the others which became the problem.

The course is structured so you flesh out your idea piece by piece. We looked at the things you’d expect like the genre, setting, goals, obstacles, consequences, story arcs, and character profiles. However, we also explored loglines, opening scenes, plot twists, structuring dialogue and other smaller elements which add up to make a story.

Then we hit the point where my brain began to struggle. I’m used to chaos. I exist with a constant monologue in my brain which specialises in overthinking, random tangents, and earworms. The trouble was it now also contained random strings of ideas; thoughts for scenes, character ideas, challenges, dynamics I’d like to explore.

This is the part where often I’d give up. Too many thoughts tend to make my brain shut down, or just focus on something random. For example, today’s randomness was singing Under The Sea on a loop. I’m not sure if I need to blame my middle child or the supermarket for this, but when shopping yesterday we found Under The Sea Party Ring biscuits. Both of us immediately started singing the song. I got rid of the loop 14 hours later, but it returned this morning when middle child appeared eating the biscuits in question.

The worst part is I know all the words, but can I remember them right now? Obviously not. All I can remember is “Under the sea, under the sea. Life is better, down where it’s wetter. Under the sea.” and of course the jingly bit that comes afterward. Even if I play the song it won’t help. My brain is only looping that part.

I’m also writing this blog, doing some research about things that won’t be relevant for months, and doing some editing. Oh, and I went on a side quest to find a 3mm jack cable for my headphones which also involved putting the dishwasher on, washing some pans and playing with the puppy.

The concept of one task doesn’t really exist for me, which is why I never thought I’d be able to write a whole novel. I generally exist in a sea of to-do lists, going to do one task and ending up doing three others and forgetting the original – something we call side questing in our house. A perfect example is the tangent of everything I’ve just written before mentioning the point of the blog, organising my brain.

It turns out workbooks can be magical. All my thoughts had places in the workbook and as I threw them all down week by week I was creating a resource for myself to use later. I really need things to be complete, so I filled in every single line of that sucker.

Sometimes I’d get ideas which fit on other pages, so I started just adding those as notes to a big ideas list in a notebook we had also been given. This was hit-and-miss in terms of helpfulness as sometimes I’d lose them in the mess of other notes. However, if I repeat this process again – which I likely will – I won’t be bound by the course and will probably fill in the workbook in a totally random order which would make anyone organised cry.

The workbook also includes an activity at the end where you pull all your information together in order. Normally order is not my friend but this was so easy to understand even I felt organised.