In a comment to a recent blog post, J. Daniel Sawyer suggested flipping a coin to make plot decisions and thus keep things moving. Today I’ve been attempting to firm up a short story idea, coming up with a list of characters and deciding on the specific setting. At first I was having a hard time making decisions–should the story be in setting A or setting B? should the antagonist be male or female? etc., etc. At this point in story development, when everything’s still wide open, it’s hard for me to make firm decisions on which way to go, because each decision narrows future possibilities, and if it’s the “wrong” decision, I’m writing myself into a hole.

So to keep things moving I fetched a coin from my purse. It’s sitting on the table next to my laptop, but I haven’t used it yet. Evidently my muse doesn’t like the idea of deciding things on a coin flip, because ever since that coin showed up, I’ve been able to make decisions that eluded me before.

But the coin continues to sit there, just in case. Writing is so often a series of head games.