Project Journal: Novel -- example

Examples from the Project Journal of a real, published (and popular) writer: Sue Grafton.

Excerpts from her "Journal notes" for the mystery novel "K" is for Killer:

2-28-93
Starting off again with a fingertip stroll through my file called Homicide Set-Ups...pulling out four articles.

Here are some things I want to include:
Henry's birthday.
William and Rosie's wedding.
Maybe a plane trip just to get Kinsey out of Santa Teresa.

I went back and printed out large hunks of the G-Journal. It's so amazing to me to see the system at work. I'm hoping a new story will come into my consciousness.

...
How about an old-fashioned unsolved murder case?
Parents are angry because nothing's been done.
Case is old & cold, with no new leads coming in.

...
Going back again to pick up the two charts I made for the books I've done.

1. lists the book, the sex of the victim, the motive for the murder, the sex of the killer, and the nature of the finale.

2. lays out the set-up for each book: who hires Kinsey Millhone and what she's hired to do.

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That's an example of a writer's Project Journal. From clear back -- 1993. (Doesn't seem like it should be that long ago....)

It's like the expression, "thinking out loud" -- the writer is "considering out loud," or rather "considering on paper."

Have discovered through my own experience that if you (I) pick up a pen and start writing, thoughts will occur to me that didn't before I was writing -- and thoughts and ideas will become ordered in ways they didn't before, when I was just thinking about them, even if it was one of those sensuously relaxing yet thrilling think-fests that we can have while on a long drive, or while lying down with eyes closed but not sleeping....