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| DepositPhoto |
Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is all about Ideas. How
do you write down or remember those great ideas that you get
mid-shower/dream/car drive? If you lose them, how do you get them back?
As an author, I have wisps of ideas and plots running around
in my mind all the time (I’m good at multitasking!). Sometimes I’ll read an
article that inspires a plot idea or occasionally one will come to me out of
the blue. I usually write myself a one sentence note with the gist of the idea
and then I have a folder stuffed full of these. The thing is, I almost never
refer back to them.
I’m always working on a book and I’m always thinking about
the next two books to come, even if they aren’t in the same series or even the
same universe. I keep a constantly simmering ‘pot of stew’ going in my head
with ideas for these books and will rarely allow myself to get distracted by
anything newer or shinier. These three books – the one I’m writing, the next
one I’ll write and then the most likely one after that – ARE the shiny for me.
So for example, right now I’m writing a Star Cruise story set on my
interstellar space liner, which is for the Pets in Space® 5 anthology, due out
in the Fall. The next book will most likely be either JAMOKAN or TRATUS, which
are both in my Badari Warriors science fiction romance series. I’m debating between
the two of them as to what’s up first. The third book in my mind’s queue at the
moment is either one set in my fantasy world of Claddare, or maybe an Egyptian…or
one of these could be my fourth in line, if I write Jamokan and then Tratus.
BUT, this week I’ve become enamored of one of my older ideas
and am severely tempted to write it after Jamokan. I have to go where the Muse
has the energy to be in order to write my best books and to have the creative
flow. I’ve learned my own process pretty well over the years! This particular
plot is one I’ve been mulling for years, off and on, but it never bubbled up to
the top of the list for whatever reason. The same thing happened with COLONY
UNDER SIEGE: INTERSTELLAR PLAGUE, which I released in June. I’d had it in mind
to do forever but then the pandemic made it the only thing I was in the mood to
write and so I did.
This portion of the writing year is a bit under constraint
because I can’t release a scifi romance in the same time as Pets In Space (we don’t
compete with ourselves), but I do have to keep paying the rent and the bills,
so I need to keep my releases coming on a more or less regular schedule. So,
the fantasy or the Egyptian might come next after JAMOKAN purely due to scheduling concerns. Luckily I
love writing in both worlds but my fan base is smaller than for the SFR.
If a random idea really strikes a chord with me, I won’t forget
it. I may take years to actually use it in a book, but it’ll always be there,
in the Muse’s list of ingredients.
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| My first "woke up in the morning, gotta write it" title and my first really BIG seller! |
On really rare occasions I might wake up in the morning with
an entire book in my head (well, as completely as I ever plot in advance – the beginning,
the ending, the hero and heroine and a few major scenes) and I know I have to
set aside everything else and just write this
book. Those plots are a gift not to be squandered and they kind of write
themselves. This is where it’s helpful to be independently published as I don’t
owe anyone anything under a contract with a hard date. Pets in Space is an
exception.
The other thing I have to be careful of is not thinking
through an idea too much before writing it. I used to have a two hour commute
that could become three hours or more on the Southern California freeways. I
also used to get anxiety attacks after a really bad 1982 accident (long story,
on a freeway offramp, locked the brakes, rolled the car three times, ended
upside down after knocking over a tree, broke three ribs..). One day I was
stuck in traffic, on the way to work, anxiety giving me hell…so I told myself a
story. You can safely do that if your car isn’t moving or only inching forward
in occasional bursts. It was a scifi ghost story, set in space on an abandoned
colony. I seriously gave myself goose
bumps because it was so darn scary. And then the traffic eventually opened
up, I got to work and was late for meetings that day, etc., so I never wrote
any of it down. It was one of those shining magic stories that I should have
dropped everything to actually write but at the old day job that certainly wasn’t
a possibility. Bosses paying you to work don’t exactly resonate with you
shutting your door and writing a novel on their time.
Will I ever write it? I haven’t forgotten the essentials and
at one point I did write maybe the first 1000 words but the magic of it was
gone. The Muse felt we’d been there and done that and weren’t going back. If I
think about a story too much, I can’t write it, and on that commute from hell,
I’d let myself develop the entire story, like a movie, down to the details so I
wouldn’t have a major anxiety attack and pass out in the (allegedly) fast lane.
Soooo, I kinda doubt it but never say never. If I got a new wrinkle or twist to
add, then maybe. But for now the few notes and words there are on it reside in
that bulging, never opened “Note for Stories” folder in the old beige file
cabinet.
