Hello!
This blog will be dedicated to chronicling my saga of writing my next book, from the initial conception of the idea and outlining, through the writing and many, many revisions, until the book is released. My target goal is to release the next book by January 2023.
I’m excited to be working on a book again. My process to get started is lengthy, and sometimes feels like the longest leg of my writing journey. It might be because I’m always resistant to start a new project. This isn’t out of laziness (although there’s always the temptation to play video games rather than be productive). It’s because of that initial doubt that the story is any good.
With this in mind, when an idea pops into my head, I don’t write it down for a couple days. This might seem counterintuitive. How could I expect to remember this amazing new story idea if I don’t record it somewhere? But that’s the point. I’m screening out weak ideas from the outset. If a new story really is that amazing, I should still be thinking about it days/weeks/months/years later. If I can’t even remember what it was two days later, it wasn’t that great to begin with, and because it isn’t written down for me to look over again, I don’t have to waste anymore time thinking about it.
Even if a new idea survives that initial cut, I still don’t fully commit to writing it. I’ll jot down notes about where I think the story could go, the characters that would be involved in the plot, things like that. But if its still a strong concept, ideas are going to fester in my brain, I’ll constantly think up new details, backstories, side characters, running side plots, you name it, until I’ve got way more than I’d ever need to write a book. If this phase starts to fizzle out after a handful of pages of notes and outlines, I kick the idea to the curb and start again.
This is what I’ve been up to for most of the first half of the year. Looking at my notebook of story ideas, I count 8 since November of last year that made it to the jotting down phase that I ultimately rejected.
Most were rejected because the ideas didn’t have enough legs on them for a book. Maybe they’ll become short stories one day. One was a strong candidate, but the more I thought about it, the more I’d be interested in turning it into a trilogy, but I’m just not willing to commit to writing a trilogy (yet).
It’s definitely easy to get discouraged during this phase. It can be tedious, having ideas pop into your head, only to turn them aside just as quickly. I don’t see the use in getting frustrated. I think that leads to the catastrophic decision to try to rush the process, and rush things out. That always runs the risk of a bad story.
I never try to force an idea though. I always believe they’ll come, and while I wait, I work on other things. I wrote a script for my debut novel Dig Down (twice actually, because my laptop crashed and I didn’t have it backed up). I wrote some short stories related to my second book Lock the Doors. I’ve read or listened to 40 books this year, because I think the more stories you experience, the more ideas you have. Not everything was writing, I’ve also been learning how to code. I think a relaxed mind is more open to ideas.
And about a month ago, one finally stuck. It survived not being written down for a few days, and more ideas kept growing out of every idea I wrote down. I’m still a long ways from the finish line (I can’t even see one from where I’m standing right now). I only have a semblance of how it would end, and I don’t even have a title. But I have the most important thing right now. An idea that sticks, and that I want to see where it goes.