Distractions

Lately I’ve been getting ideas for the book after the book after the next book (!), which is really distracting.  I should just be getting on with the one I’m working on right now, but when you get a good idea, you can’t let it pass by – you just have to jot it down somewhere, anywhere!  Especially if, like me, you can’t remember something from one minute to the next without putting it in writing.  But it’s very annoying.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying my WIP and haven’t yet hit that “oh-my-god-this-is-such-a-pile-of-cr*p” stage, but those tantalising ideas of future WIP’s won’t leave me alone and every now and then I have to break off what I’m doing, open a new document and write what’s clamouring to come out.

It sounds insane, doesn’t it?  I should be able to control my thoughts, tell them to form an orderly queue and stop jumping it.  I am half English after all, and aren’t the English supposed to be good at queuing?  But maybe my Swedish genes take over in this case, because those ideas just aren’t listening.  Or I have no willpower.  Or something.

Actually, I shouldn’t be complaining, because surely the worst thing for an author would be if you had NO ideas.  None at all.  If your brain was drier than a desert with nothing but tumbleweed blowing through.  That would be nothing short of a disaster.  And that’s why I tend to humour my ideas when they get impatient and won’t wait their turn.  They’re my insurance against the dry season.

Maybe I should give up visiting interesting places?  Because places very often inspire me, especially old ones with an atmosphere of times gone by.  Take for instance Caerleon, in south Wales.  Now, I’ve never wanted to write a book featuring Romans.  I like learning about them and think they were awesome, but I let other people do the writing.  But when I visited what used to be the Roman town of Isca, the atmosphere got to me and those “what if” questions began to crowd my mind ...

I’m supposed to be writing about Japan right now and into my mind pops a Roman centurion.  Very distracting indeed!  I think I’d better go and deal with him ...

Career Planning, or Sailing Blind

© Krzysztof Ostoja-helczynski | Dreamstime Stock Photos

In the day job, there are supervisions and appraisals. Evaluations and training needs assessments. Recently I've been looking at coporate, team and personal goals. Short, medium and long term. I can look at strategies, plans and peg my own aspirations to them. I can work with my line manager, area manager and team to set realistic, appropriate goals. Beyond that, I can career plan and set where I want to be in a few years' time.

 I feel the need for some writing career planning, but who do I work with? I need direction and an action plan.

"Are you okay, you look sad," asked Husband the other day. I wasn't sad, precisely, just preoccupied with trying to work out something I didn't appear to be able to work out... I couldn't figure out what to do and how to get there.

Yes, I know I could just write, but I feel like that old adage, "if one does not know for which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable." I've had a long break from writing seriously, and my writing confidence has suffered and I no longer know for sure what I can do.

Should I finish the big blockbuster or the abandoned Third Book? Should I try something completely different, or turn my attention to short stories? I feel like I can't afford to get this wrong, but have no idea how to work through it to get it right.

But maybe - unpalateable thought - there is no right or wrong thing and everything must take its chance.

But, man, I need a plan.

When Two Worlds Collide

Sometimes two things together are greater than the sum of their parts. 

I have found that this happens in my writing more and more these days. I have two ideas which are completely unrelated and one day they find each other in my brain and…

There is a shiny new idea, pulsating with life and possibility. Silver and glinting. Tentacles of plot points reaching for completion.

Supposedly I am not the only one this happens to:

Two-idea notion

“What usually works for me is to take two idea-sources and combine them. As with a metaphor, the tension between the two ideas leads to interesting possibilities. It’s a way of drawing surprising answers out of your unconscious mind.” – Orson Scott Card

Here are some of my ideas that collided to make something new:

Stone circles + angry teen girl

Grumpy teddy bear + and a story at midnight

An assassin + never growing old

A divorce lawyer + A Christmas Carol

And my most recent collision… a songwriter + ????, well you’ll have to wait until I’ve written it

Now I’m wondering what I could create if I mixed up my ideas. Would they create something even greater or will they flop around deflated and flaccid?

What has happened when your ideas have collided?

I have a great idea...

My non-writing friends tell me fairly often that they're amazed that I can keep on coming up for ideas for novels. I'm not sure why people pick up on this particular aspect of writing, because just about any writer can tell you that the ideas are actually the easy part.

Ideas are everywhere. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Ideas are in every news programme, in every magazine, every journey and every chat with friends. It's getting the right idea that's hard.

It has to be something that your agent will be happy to sell, that your publisher will like, and also your publisher's marketing department. It needs to attract booksellers and the press. In this market, it needs to be catchy enough to be able to be described in a sentence or two, and yet complex enough so that it's not a barefaced cliche. Preferably it will lend itself to the perfect title and type of cover, too. If it has a nice marketing hook that the press can latch on to, that's even better.

It also needs to be something that you, the author, will be happy to live with for about a year at least while you're writing it, and then not be sick of it when it comes time to promote it. Probably it will appeal to your core themes, the sort of thing that you tend to write books about and which you come back to again and again and again. I know that there are lots and lots of ideas out there that are good, but for me, an idea that zings has to touch, in some way, my core themes of identity and perception. Otherwise, I won't be interested in writing it.

That's why it hardly ever works when someone comes up to you and says, "I've got this great idea, you can use it if you like." It might be great, but it's not your idea. Therefore, it won't work. I usually suggest to the person that maybe they'd like to write it themselves; if it appeals to them, they'll do a much better job with it than I ever could.

Some ideas seem good at the time, but then when you get down to working with them, when you start getting your hands dirty, you discover that actually they're not very good at all. Likewise—though it's much rarer—sometimes you have an idea that seems so blatantly obvious that everyone and his dog will have done it already...but they haven't. It's up to you.

Some ideas are really good, but you've put them in the wrong place. I've given my characters the wrong jobs before, for example. The jobs were awesome, they were really great to write about, except they just didn't fit.

And some ideas, you come up with when you've had a few too many glasses of wine. You scrawl them down and your handwriting is nearly illegible. The less said about those ideas, probably the better. I found a Post-It with "STAIRCASE" written on it the other day. I have absolutely no clue what it means, but I do remember that it seemed like utter brilliance at the time.

Best and worst of all, ideas don't come on demand. You have to wheedle and coax them. You have to catch them while they're not paying attention, by watching them out of the corners of your eyes. You can wait and wait and think damn, I'm never going to write another book again, and then BOO! They'll jump out at you and get you in a headlock until you can't think about anything but writing them.

Those are the best kinds of ideas.

Check back on Sunday for Anna's post.

Same Old, Same Old

I think one of my special talents is being able to complain about any stage of the writing process whatsoever. I believe I've already moaned on this blog about finishing a book...now I'm going to moan about starting one.

People ask "Where do you get your ideas"? And my answer is usually, "Getting ideas isn't the problem. It's getting the right idea that is tricky." More specifically—getting the right idea and then developing it in the right way. This right idea doesn't have to be particularly original. Most every idea has been done already, in most cases over and over and over again. Shakespeare stole most of his plots. What an author has to do is take an old idea, and make it her own.

I'm at the point where I've got an idea for the next book, and it feels like the right idea, and I'm spending some time brainstorming and researching and developing it. My biggest problem right at this moment is trying to make it new for me. This will (hopefully) be my fifteenth published book, and I've found that I tend to have types of characters, types of situations, types of settings that appeal to me and that I want to use over and over again. Like, I like chefs. I really like chefs. I've had three of them so far, and those three characters have appeared in five books. I just...like them, okay? Same with writers. I've had four of those, and they've all been heroes or heroines.

So rule number one and two for this new book: No chefs. And no writers.

More insidiously, I tend to have types of story and conflict that appeal to me. They say that every writer has her core themes, which she returns to over and over again, and mine are identity and truth. Someone, most likely the heroine, is always going to be lying or hiding something in my books. And someone, most likely the hero, is going to be the person who forces her to admit and face up to the truth.

I know that other writers have their own core themes. In every book of Susanna's that I've read, for example, the theme seems to be discovery of self and community, of connection between people, and between present and past. Anna's books are about self-discovery, too, but in a different way: they're about finding moral strength, and courage. (Susanna and Anna might disagree with me here, of course.)

I keep on trying to think up different stories. But my brain, my heart, my fingers all steer me in the direction of stories about identity and truth. Probably featuring chefs and writers.

(NO! No chefs or writers! I swear it!!!!!)

Of course, this doesn't bother me in other people's books. Marian Keyes, for example, often writes about overcoming depression or addiction. Do I care? I do not. I lap it up. I love it! That story of hers is something I want to read, over and over and over again.

Do you find you have topics you write about, over and over? Do you find your favourite authors returning to themes again and again? What do you think about repetition?

(And in my new book...can I maybe have a blogging dinner lady? How about a skywriting short-order cook?)