O is for Onward

BookEnd is in Ninja Agent's capable hands. She will figure out who to submit to and how. It will be happening in the next two weeks. I have nothing to do with it - my part (for now) is done. It means that for the first time in two years I'm not even thinking about BookEnd or querying. It's left me feeling both a bit lost ("Where did I leave that thing I've worked on for two years? It was here a second ago!") and a lot liberated.

A funny thing happened as soon as I sent my minor revisions to Barbara. Ideas bloomed.

I guess I'd been unconsciously keeping them at bay on purpose, thinking that I should just concentrate on what's on my writing plate. Especially with the follow up books to BookEnd (BookBegin and BookBinder), I knew roughly what I wanted to happen in those two books, but I hadn't started writing them. I wasn't sure if I should since without an agent, it didn't seem sensible to spend my writing time on books 2 and 3 of a series I had no idea if anyone would be interested in.

Now I have scenes sketched out. I know who dies in book 2 and who changes. I know how it ends and how 3 begins. I look at the new world I'm starting and grin like a crazed literary despot. It feels good.

AND I've also had ideas bloom in my wip FIND ME. I know something about Mop that she doesn't know, something that will almost kill her. Man, this is fun.

So, what's blooming in your idea garden?

Let The Right One In

I'm slowly, almost preternaturally slowly, climbing back on the bicycle. It's been a month since a finished BOOKEND and started querying. I know I have to start writing again, everyone's said so.

But I had a problem. I've got a digital drawer full of ideas to work on and none of them were doing it for me. One seemed a little forced - did those mermaids really belong there, or was I just (pun intended) fishing? Another idea was fine, just completely uninspiring. If the author is uninspired, how in blazes can anyone else be into it? That idea also went back into the file. Revise the first book I wrote? Meh. Start on the second book in the BOOKEND universe? That was much more exciting a prospect, but I didn't feel ready to go back into that world yet.

I puzzled and poured over these ideas as the weeks passed. I got rejections and the only antidote to those poison pills is sending more queries and WORKING. So I was pressuring myself to come up with something I wanted to write.

And like all good things, it came to me in the night. I'm not a great sleeper at the best of times, and I often lie in bed thinking diaphanous thoughts, just letting them drift through and not bothering much about if them make sense. I swear on a stack of Elements of Style, that's how Mop entered my head. I could see her, easily, in my mind's eye. And I knew where she lived. I'm talking, I could walk with her down the halls of her apartment building, see the view out her window. I knew her mother and her mother's demons. And I knew what Mop could do. She can find things. Anything. She's a finder. She makes money for her and her mom by finding lost things for her neighbors, anything from engagement rings to lost kittens. But there are dangerous lost things that should stay lost. And Mop can't help what she is, she finds things, no matter if they want to be found.

I got my arse out of bed and wrote pages and pages of back story - just trying to flesh out who Mop is and what her situation is. I haven't been as excited about a story since I started writing BookEnd. That's when I knew I had the right one.

Now I'm almost ready to start writing Chapter 1. I just need to figure out the spark - the inciting incident.

How do you know when you've found the right idea to work on?

Ideas and the New Baby Smell

All babies are awesome. I'm not talking about cuteness or that new baby smell or how they seem to be lit up from the inside. Even if you don't like babies and would rather chew off your own arm than change a diaper, you'll concede that babies are awesome. Because babies are possibilities. They aren't the seven year old that slams the door on your face when you ask to have a play date with their sister. They aren't the double crossing ex-friend who told everyone about your embarrassing rash. They aren't the sociopath budding into a serial killer. They're just babies, the beginning of everything.

Ideas are like babies. There are no bad ideas (ok, yes there are, or seem to be, but even bad ideas, in the right context and execution can be good ideas, like prisoners reenacting the Thriller video - which, for me, never gets old.) In fact, ideas are so awesome that it's hard to know what idea is going to blossom into a good thing.

When I went to my first conference I was freaked out. Everyone I talked to had a good idea. I definitely gravitated more towards some than others, but they all sounded good, plausible, real. All of them would make, at the very least, decent books. How could I compete when everyone drinking at the hotel bar was sitting on an awesome idea? People told me my idea was awesome too, but I was like "So what? That's like saying the earth is round!"

I have no trouble coming up with ideas. Do you? All my trouble is centered around getting the idea out and making sense. Then revising the ever living sunshine out of it. Another problem I have is falling in love with an idea that is beautiful and has a nice singing voice but is wrong for me. I usually find out we aren't meant to be after I've written three or four chapters. I think what's most addictive about ideas is their limitless potential. It can make me giddy and, sometimes, unwilling to put the work in on the other thing, the ms. that is no longer an idea but a lumbering, sometimes misbehaving, reality.

So, to celebrate the IDEA in all it's glory, here's a link to the Black List, "An annual list of Hollywood's most liked unproduced screenplays." There are some great ones here. It's nice to see that there's a screenplay for Kody Keplinger's DUFF floating around out there - hope that gets made. But my favorite idea is Maggie. Here's the blurb from the Black List:

As a “walking dead” virus spreads across the country, 

a farm family helps their eldest daughter come to 

terms with her infection as she slowly becomes a 

flesh-eating zombie. 

What's your favorite unrealized idea, be it one of your own, one on this list, or one you heard of?

B is for Balance

and for The Birthday Party

There are two kinds of balance, I think, in writing - and I'm shite at both. There's the balance outside of what I write, which means getting everything done and having time to breathe, oh yeah, and write. Nathan Bransford touched on this topic last week and I think in this ebook/author platform age, its harder to do. Blogging takes up a lot of time, especially when you want to be thoughtful, but can't always be (I leave Wednesdays as my chunk o' links day so I don't burn out quite so much.) Not to mention keeping up with other blogs and finding new ones - there are so many people out there that must be living lives very similar to mine with similar dreams. Reading their blogs makes it feel less lonely on mine, and makes me feel part of a community. You also have to constantly educate yourself on the state of the industry on what deals are being done and who is sleeping with who.

Okay, just put that in there to see if you were paying attention. I don't actually know/want to know who is sleeping with whom. But I do want to know if I should have used 'whom' or if 'who' is now more generally accepted. Balance. I have more curiosity than I have bandwith to absorb it all. So sometimes I stop. I don't go online, I don't read news. I just stop trying to keep up with the writing jones. I go for a walk and count bluejays. I jump in the bouncy castle with my daughter. It's refreshing to be off grid, though a little scary. Ultimately I think it's a reset. I can go back to the world of the writing life feeling less like a hamster on a wheel.

In my writing, balance means something different, but it's also hard to do. I don't really understand people who ask writers 'where do you get your ideas from?' I have no more power to stop an idea popping up than to stop a charging bull. The effers are everywhere. The problem is finding the right idea AND resisting the urge to populate the WIP with too many ideas. Ideas, in and of themselves are marvelous things. They're frigging supermodels, beautiful, enticing, wearing cool clothes. But I have to be careful I don't litter my WIP with too many beautiful ideas, just because they are there, drinking seltzer and smoking too much. Balance. It takes daily practice.

So, how do you find writing and life balance? Share your tips!