I had thought about something interesting to write about. Interesting, funny, even maybe relevant. I say ‘maybe’ because I got distracted… and I have forgotten entirely what it was. Before you all say ‘Well, that’s old age for you’ one of my earliest memories (no, not last week) is me giving my mother hell for distracting me just when I had come up with a whole new interesting ‘concept’ daydream (I was a very sick little kid, and used to entertain myself by telling myself long complicated stories). My mother was NOT the kind of person anyone gave hell to. I think the fact that her tiny child did for what was no apparent reason actually either amused or alarmed her. I was terribly upset that I’d LOST the train of ideas.
I think a fair number of writers have the ‘brilliant idea that occurred to me in the middle of the night, and I was so sure I would remember it in the morning’ syndrome. I certainly have. I have also had – as a result of just remembering it was brilliant and not much else, tried to sit up and write it down. Reading it in the morning it made less sense than politician’s explanation of where the money all went. I am sure it was brilliant at the time… well, no, to be honest I am not, but what does show is the level of subconscious processing that probably is going on.
I often wish had a bigger head. I mean besides the fact I’d have to live outdoors or fit double doors… no, I mean the internal geography of my brain. Let’s be fair – a lot of the plots of my books (the Heirs of Alexandria ones for example) are Byzantine in their interwoven complexity, and have a slew of characters too. It’s a lot for a poor, simple, simian of very small brain like myself to keep track of, let alone set out in a way that it seems simple, obvious and easy to follow. I need to lay all the pieces out and look at them and work out just they fit together, and how to make them obviously flow from each other.
I am here under false pretenses (this genius bit. The mad is OK). I’m a simple fellow – I’d like that story to be something I get on the first pass, speed-reading and skimming all the dull bits (yes, I do. Don’t you?) I like it if enjoy the story read thus, and still enjoy it and find so much more on re-reading (some books for the umteenth time and I am still discovering new twists (Yes, Sir Terry, I am looking at you)). This is what I seek to do in my own writing.
It ties into the fact that I am not very good – as a result, in writing a lot in one day, or a book very fast. Because, for me, anyway, I need that whole section laid out in my head and to be the subject of my obsessive focus. I do have an obsessive intense focus, and build that world in great detail in my head – You get a window into it – I see so very much more. And when I am that focused, I think it, dream it, and, yes, sometimes frantically have to write down an idea, a link, a scene before it is lost. For me, anyway, it explains why ‘real life’ be that bureaucrats or sick kids makes writing so hard, and how vital that ‘noodling time’ is.
Sometimes a story just needs that time. Sometimes, when everything aligns it comes out of me really quickly. But if I don’t spend the time trying… it doesn’t come out at all.
Mad Genius Club 
7 responses to “I almost had it…”
In my experience, plot bunnies run away if not used, not only if not remembered.
Like real bunnies, plot bunnies don’t tend to live that long. But if you have the idea written down, sometimes you can use it to breed a new bunny.
I have learned to keep a 5×8 pad of paper with a pen clipped to it within reach of the bed. To minimize spousal disturbance, I find the light from my ereader is quite sufficient to scribble by, leaning on an elbow.
I get all my bright ideas these days either while ruminating sleepily, or by changing something environmental in a story (person, place, world, whatever) and causing a mental flood thereby (“Oh, but that means…”). Behind my open laptop on my desk are stacks of 3×5 (and other) sheets of paper held together by binder clips for the current series: N1 (Novel 1), N2, N3, N4 (very skinny), N5 (not skinny at all), N? (alarmingly thick) — plot ideas for more books than I have series entry titles. (N1 & N2 are written but getting major world updates prior to release.)
Forty-eight. I just went and counted how many (unfinished) things I’ve got in my “Ideas and Starts” file. When an idea comes, you’ve got to grab it and get it down on paper or pixels, or it flies off, never to return.
That’s not counting the ones that have been written and published, or have been expanded and worked on enough to make it to the white board, which currently has eleven items on it.
It drives my Alpha readers up the wall, when i drop something and run off to get something down right now, before it escapes. Leaving them dangling on the “Real” Work-in-Progress for days or weeks.
Eh. I do not recommend my work methods to anyone. But it does work for me.
BECAUSE life isn’t challenging enough, I’m in a class for the next license up in my current position in the state hierarchy, I started putting a new edit together of the novel Sarah A Hoyt was kind enough to show all my shortcomings (hey, I was asking for it!) and I started working on a new story with aims to serialize starring a new character I totally did not rip off from Star Trek: The Next Generation. In this story I’ve been in a holding pattern since last Wednesday because I can’t decide how to proceed into the next scene. And then I was reading my old Supermans last weekend and had a sudden jolt of inspiration! …which I promptly forgot and have lost to oblivion. I’m thinking to go back to those issues and try to re-divine it up, but I’m afraid that idea is gone forever. Oh well. I’ll think of something. I have to, I already know how it ends and it ties in with my other stuff so nicely.
Well, the ones I dream make no sense written down but the ones I think up at 4 a.m. when I can’t sleep are usually good — IF I write them down. They might provide five minutes or five hours of writing…
A couple of weeks back, maybe more, I don’t remember, I dreamed that I was writing an article. It was loquacious, it was erudite and exciting. I woke up to the realization that I had no clue what the article was about.
Yep. I get it.