feast or famine

For the last six months I haven’t had one good story idea. Not one. To be fair, I’d just finished polishing a manuscript for submission (the editor at the Big NY House to which I sent it has now had it for 49 days, not that I’m counting) and was gearing up to do a lot of promoting for the July release of Secrets Volume 27, so I did have other things occupying my mind.

But an artist doesn’t quit painting just because he finished the one he was working on. He picks up his brushes and starts anew with a blank canvas, and a writer must do the same. The problem was, my whole mind was a blank canvas, and trying to pull an original idea out of it just not working. There is nothing more frustrating to a writer (at least to this writer) then not knowing what to write.

Then lo, lightning struck. A story idea I’ve been kicking around for a very long time finally slid into place, and after four years (yes, four years!) of not knowing where to go with it or how to make it work I suddenly knew exactly what to do. And the floodgates opened.

And not just for that story. When that little thing, whatever it is, clicked open in my head and let in the juju, it invited unrelated juju to the party as well. So now, in addition to that project, I have four others jockeying for position in my head. Two that are related to the current one, and two that are completely separate. And every single one of them wants to be written right fucking now.

(Incidentally, I used to hear writers talk about how the people in their stories would harass them, or nag them, or not let them do what they wanted to do with the story, as if these were actual people instead of made up characters. And I used to think, “Jeez, you must be nutso – they’re made up people! They can’t nag you, or make you write the story their way, because they don’t exist!” Yeah, I was completely wrong about that. I imagine that this is a little like what multiple personality disorder must be like, except the people in my head don’t actually push me out of the way. They just nag and harass and refuse to let me write the story the way I want to write it.)

Having all that going on is great! It’s fantastic, knowing that when I’m done with this project there are four more ready to go. It gives me a sense of security, and relief that I won’'t have to face that blank canvas again (at least for a while), but the problem is that I can’t write more than one book at a time. Oh, I can think about more than one, but I won’t be able to start writing any of the other stories in my head until the one I’m currently working on is finished.

But that doesn’t mean the people in those stories are satisfied to wait until I’m ready to talk to them – quite the contrary. They want to be heard, they want their story told, and they’re not shy about letting me know. The notebook I keep in my purse is getting crowded with my little scribbles about characterization, plot, research…so much so that when I go back later to look at them I’m having a hard time telling which notes are for which book. So I’m going to Office Max today to get four notebooks to carry around – one for each story.

I’m going to have to start carrying the big purse.