NINC Conference- Collage session

One of the NINC @ Night sessions I went to was on story collage. Is it possible for something to be energizing and calming at the same time?

I'd been working since January on a collage for my romantic mystery at home, and though I brought it to show, I had no intention of working on it at the conference. So I thought I'd just goof around and be social. A page from GQ magazine with the headline 'His Orgasm' caught my eye [Hey, I write for Blaze!] so I started gathering all kinds of photos of sexy, half naked men. One nice big picture in particular caught my eye so I pasted him in the middle of a file folder and started cutting out the other guys just to slap on the page.

Then something... weird... happened. I looked, really looked, at the picture I'd chosen and the man's eyes began to haunt me, calling out for my attention. So I went with my gut instinct and abandoned my ode to orgasms and started trusting my instincts, just ripping and cutting words and phrases from various magazines that whispered "yes".

I ended up with not a goof off project that I'd later throw away, but a really powerful combination of images and ideas for a richly detailed, haunting story that I'm excited about writing!