Blatant Favortism
There's nothing quite like minding your own business when you're suddenly hit by an idea smack between the eyes. This is especially delightful when you're doing something else like washing the dishes, driving the car, or working on a book that's already in progress. (Oh Maggie, you're such a card! One might suspect the Queen of Knives...making me turn to the Five of Cups.) It's like releasing your inner cute kitten while dangling an "Ooh! Shiny!" and "Oh, look, *shiny*!" and "oooOOOooo! SHINY!" *pounce* Sometimes too much of a good thing is maddening.
But this is NOT the time to drop everything and dive into a new story! If you're one of those types who have a bunch of half-finished cool pet projects lying around the house *ahem* *cough* *sputter* then you know both the temptation to redirect like a Tron cycle taking a sharp right and the folly and disappointment that comes from abandoning those epiphanies left behind to rot in the basement or craft corner somewhere. Shiny, sparkly new thingies have a way of disguising malaise and the need to push through. Right now, it's most important that you show blatant favoritism and tarry on!
To whit, I love steampunk, but I don't write steampunk. Or, truth be told, I have an idea for steampunk that I really enjoy, I wrote a few chapters of it, outlined the rest, then set it aside while I entered the Wild Wild World of revisions when LUMINOUS came back into my possession after a year of canoodling with my editor then showing up on the front step marked-up, well-read, and grinning like an idiot. This is a new skill I'm learning: to hit pause on my Muse and return to whatever it is later. Not just with steampunk, but with any idea that sticks.
That isn't easy, at least for me. I have to admit that the WIP I had been merrily banging away at when the offer came in about 3 years ago subsequently died on the vine due to intense creative strangulation as I wrestled and fought with my personal angels to get back to "that place" and start it up again...and I couldn't. And didn't. I went on with a half-finished idea at over 70K flapping in the breeze behind me like a white flag of surrender. I'm not proud of it and it haunts me like Marley's ghost. It wasn't the manuscript, it was me. I had to move on. I had to let go.
So to cope, I learned to allow myself tasters or sample platters: one to three chapters where I could explore the idea, one to two pages of outlines or notes, perhaps a grueling synopsis that I might share with my agent to get an opinion before I carried on with whatever it was that I'm supposed to be doing while I enter the coveted 6-month countdown for my very first novel to make its debut. I tried a little twisted faery tale, dabbled with a breath of heady steampunk, had a dalliance with a dark tale of love and knives (which later turned into the option book, who knew?) and then it was back for copyedits and a reunion with Consuela, Wish, Abacus, Sissy, Tender, and V. And then off they go again into the labyrinth of First Pass Pages and whatever else happens to make them look pretty on the page. [Hint: butterflies!]
Alone once again, I've been madly seduced by my latest WIP's "alternate reality" sans my usual tricks: no magic, no otherworld, no collapsing time and space, no mythos, no sharp, metal objects, and no mysterious Someone who turns the MC's world upside-down. (Maggie is being particularly sadistic this time around.) It's a little bit scary and majorly confronting, but also thrilling. Maggie may have coaxed me back to my original first love in spec-fic: sci-fi. *gasp!* The scandal! I stagger at the implications and type madly before Consuela returns and finds me in the metaphorical arms of another manuscript. My agent warns me that even if I finish this in record time, it will probably not see the light of day for years, if we're lucky. And that's true. But I have no choice: I have to write it while it's here and now.
And I'm terrified of losing it like I did it's older sib. I know it'll be hard to put it down and pick it up again with the same mental passion when I revisit other worlds (not to mention the real one, my own, with kids and housework, bills, karate, and the ever-present specter of What's For Dinner?) and I hate to show favoritism, being a good parent, but Consuela gets first dibs because she's the first and, right now, the best. It's *her* time. And she deserves the spotlight and the accolades and the love. But the truth is, I've moved on since then. Those books on the shelves are an average of 1-3 year echoes from the past, a sort of homage to time-travel for book lovers everywhere. The authors who tout them now have had to reinvent that original sparkle in their eye because a lot of life--real and otherwise--has happened since. It's not hard, but it's not the same as when pages were freshly-printed and the words singing for the first time in your brain. Now you're well-familiar with one another, having gone through changes, and tough starts and stops, you've introduced her to some friends and family, some partners and pros, and she's tidied up, shiny, and ready for the ball.
That's Consuela for me: the reigning princess returning, victorious, dragon head in hand and maybe an accolade or two on her arm. Her story was my passion years ago, but now I get to see her with new eyes as well as old ones; the eyes I once had when our mutual infatuation was fresh and new--the "honeymoon" period where she could do no wrong and I was blind to her flaws--and hold her up to the world as my One and Only.
She still is, in a way. She is my first book.
But (hopefully) not my last.
*Shiny!*
But this is NOT the time to drop everything and dive into a new story! If you're one of those types who have a bunch of half-finished cool pet projects lying around the house *ahem* *cough* *sputter* then you know both the temptation to redirect like a Tron cycle taking a sharp right and the folly and disappointment that comes from abandoning those epiphanies left behind to rot in the basement or craft corner somewhere. Shiny, sparkly new thingies have a way of disguising malaise and the need to push through. Right now, it's most important that you show blatant favoritism and tarry on!
To whit, I love steampunk, but I don't write steampunk. Or, truth be told, I have an idea for steampunk that I really enjoy, I wrote a few chapters of it, outlined the rest, then set it aside while I entered the Wild Wild World of revisions when LUMINOUS came back into my possession after a year of canoodling with my editor then showing up on the front step marked-up, well-read, and grinning like an idiot. This is a new skill I'm learning: to hit pause on my Muse and return to whatever it is later. Not just with steampunk, but with any idea that sticks.
That isn't easy, at least for me. I have to admit that the WIP I had been merrily banging away at when the offer came in about 3 years ago subsequently died on the vine due to intense creative strangulation as I wrestled and fought with my personal angels to get back to "that place" and start it up again...and I couldn't. And didn't. I went on with a half-finished idea at over 70K flapping in the breeze behind me like a white flag of surrender. I'm not proud of it and it haunts me like Marley's ghost. It wasn't the manuscript, it was me. I had to move on. I had to let go.
So to cope, I learned to allow myself tasters or sample platters: one to three chapters where I could explore the idea, one to two pages of outlines or notes, perhaps a grueling synopsis that I might share with my agent to get an opinion before I carried on with whatever it was that I'm supposed to be doing while I enter the coveted 6-month countdown for my very first novel to make its debut. I tried a little twisted faery tale, dabbled with a breath of heady steampunk, had a dalliance with a dark tale of love and knives (which later turned into the option book, who knew?) and then it was back for copyedits and a reunion with Consuela, Wish, Abacus, Sissy, Tender, and V. And then off they go again into the labyrinth of First Pass Pages and whatever else happens to make them look pretty on the page. [Hint: butterflies!]
Alone once again, I've been madly seduced by my latest WIP's "alternate reality" sans my usual tricks: no magic, no otherworld, no collapsing time and space, no mythos, no sharp, metal objects, and no mysterious Someone who turns the MC's world upside-down. (Maggie is being particularly sadistic this time around.) It's a little bit scary and majorly confronting, but also thrilling. Maggie may have coaxed me back to my original first love in spec-fic: sci-fi. *gasp!* The scandal! I stagger at the implications and type madly before Consuela returns and finds me in the metaphorical arms of another manuscript. My agent warns me that even if I finish this in record time, it will probably not see the light of day for years, if we're lucky. And that's true. But I have no choice: I have to write it while it's here and now.
And I'm terrified of losing it like I did it's older sib. I know it'll be hard to put it down and pick it up again with the same mental passion when I revisit other worlds (not to mention the real one, my own, with kids and housework, bills, karate, and the ever-present specter of What's For Dinner?) and I hate to show favoritism, being a good parent, but Consuela gets first dibs because she's the first and, right now, the best. It's *her* time. And she deserves the spotlight and the accolades and the love. But the truth is, I've moved on since then. Those books on the shelves are an average of 1-3 year echoes from the past, a sort of homage to time-travel for book lovers everywhere. The authors who tout them now have had to reinvent that original sparkle in their eye because a lot of life--real and otherwise--has happened since. It's not hard, but it's not the same as when pages were freshly-printed and the words singing for the first time in your brain. Now you're well-familiar with one another, having gone through changes, and tough starts and stops, you've introduced her to some friends and family, some partners and pros, and she's tidied up, shiny, and ready for the ball.
That's Consuela for me: the reigning princess returning, victorious, dragon head in hand and maybe an accolade or two on her arm. Her story was my passion years ago, but now I get to see her with new eyes as well as old ones; the eyes I once had when our mutual infatuation was fresh and new--the "honeymoon" period where she could do no wrong and I was blind to her flaws--and hold her up to the world as my One and Only.
She still is, in a way. She is my first book.
But (hopefully) not my last.
*Shiny!*
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