This post is not going to be about planning. Okay, not really. This is because I have met me, but it is also about writing.

Jack, the hero of Melva’s and my current contemporary WIP, is an actor who isn’t acting (at the moment) but still can’t turn off who he truly is. Without giving away too much, let us say that improv ensues. As Jack tells Kelly, his very much not an actress heroine, the first rule of improv is to never say “no” to your scene partner. Instead, the correct answer is, “yes, and…” Accept what your partner offers, and then add to it.

Fans of The Big Bang Theory may remember the classic episode where Penny tries to instruct Sheldon in improv (spoiler alert, it all goes horribly wrong.) Penny has set up the scene as taking place in a shoe store. Sheldon’s character enters the scene and requests frozen yogurt. In the spirit of “yes, and,” Penny’s character replies that he’s fortunate to have come to her shoe store that is also a frozen yogurt parlor. Chaos ensues from there, but you get the point. Okay, but how does this relate to writing? Glad you asked.

For some writers, including myself, the creation of a first draft is, essentially, improv. There’s a degree of flying into the mist (thanks to the late, great Jo Beverley, for that term) which is very similar from improv. I did a bunch of theater in high school and college, and if I had to go back to college, or do it over again, I would pick theater as my major. (I majored in early childhood education. It did not end well. Cas in point: I am doing this, instead.) In my very short student theater career, my favorite-est things were auditions and improv. Both have an amazing energy to them, that I palpably felt in my physical body.

It’s a difficult feeling to describe, but I recognized it, easily, when I first sat down in my Vermont College dorm room, with an electronic typewriter and a ream of typing paper (yep, that long ago) to start work on my very first historical romance novel manuscript. The resulting pages live in a storage unit now, where they cannot hurt anybody, but that feeling, of standing on the stage, facing my scene partner(s) and knowing that anything, literally anything could happen…. I want that again.

That’s why 2019 is my Year of “Yes, And….” Time to unpause, explore new things, revive old ones that have lain dormant far too long, test, and stretch (because isn’t that how muscles grow?) On Friday, N and I will brainstorm future, individual, projects. What are we each most passionate about, and how can we bring those stories to life, aka put them in the hands of readers? This is also the year where Melva and I are going to push each other, not only on our collaboration, but in our solo work as well, and maybe even beyond that.

Does this mean that every idea is going to work out? No. For every improv sketch that ends with the whole troupe and audience on the edge of losing collective bladder control and/or the ability to breathe, for laughing that hard, there is an awkward silence, a few deer in the headlight expressions, and an unspoken agreement never to speak of this again. There’s no way to tell which it’s going to be, in advance, but there’s also no way to find out except to head into the breach and take on all comers. What are you saying “yes, and….” to in the upcoming year?