All The Ideas

First, I would just like to say, I'm sorry I'm a day late on my blog.  Yesterday was a not great day.  It was stressful at work, I had no sleep because my mom was admitted to the hospital and the doctors didn't know what was wrong, and I editing on my break really didn't go well

Anyway, the point of the matter is that I made it through the day, but the concept of putting up a blog made me want to cry a little bit, so I decided that I would just wait until today.  Hence, a blog post on Thursday!

Lately it seems like I've been completely focused on Pandora, and the Jayne Pheare series.  This isn't a bad thing.  I have other projects I'm working on, so I don't want to be too wrapped up in it, but on the whole I would say that being focused definitely has more benefits than drawbacks.

I'm currently editing Pandora (Book 1) and planning Malice (Book 2).  Along with that comes unexpected surprises.  Like ideas for book 4 (it has a name, can't remember it right now.)  I've had ideas for book 3 running through my head since I started the series, but to suddenly be hit with ideas for book 4 was a new experience, and one that has me excited.  It means that I'm really starting to take this series seriously.  I'm starting to see where it's going, and that means that I might actually see this one through!  While I've completed books before, I've never completed a series, but I have hope now!

When I start a new series, I can usually see the first book pretty clearly (hopefully, since I'm planning or writing it) and the rest just seems to be shrouded in fog.  I have vague glimpses of a light shining through, giving me a general idea of where I want the books to go, but there are no details to accompany it.

Now that I'm getting further and further in to the series, that fog is beginning to lift.  I'm starting to see how some of the things that I've known are going to happen will come about.  I can see the motivations that I knew must be there but didn't really understand.  And while I can't see the exact ending, I'm starting to get hints of how things are going to turn out, and that makes me so excited.

Not all of my characters have happy endings, of course.  I have at least four characters who die (I hate the idea just as much as you guys, but sometimes it just has to be done).  And I know that I'm going to have a YA spin off that features kids that don't even exist yet in the book (like, not even the possibility...).  But the closer I get to these things happening, the more I know that it was the right call, even if the way it happens wasn't what I originally thought.

So now I anxiously want to start writing a YA series that I can't start until (at the very least) book 4, but which I probably actually can't put out until after the series is done.  I desperately want to plan book 3, but can't until I'm done Malice, and all I think about are these characters, which can be a problem when I'm getting a critique about a different book.

For now, though, I'm just going to do what my brain tells me to, which is to work on the Jayne Pheare series.  I'm going to get it done for January, and then I'm going to get it published.

Have you ever gotten caught up in a book?

The Cup Runneth Over (Day 4)

I tend to get a lot of ideas for books. Okay, more like for series of books. I've never managed to write a stand alone book before, and I doubt I'll ever figure out how to do it. The truth is that my ideas tend to be too big for a single book. And I don't mean a little too big. I mean these grand plans that if I tried to shove in to a single book would end up so long that it could be called an epic fantasy. Except it wouldn't be a fantasy.

Anyway, lets just say that my brain doesn't allow me to think in single book terms, and I've learned to deal with it.

The point of this blog, though, isn't about how big of a book I write, but rather how many ideas I have.

See, I bought a notebook last year that I dubbed my 'Shiny New Idea Book' and I started writing all of the ideas I have for novels in it. There are some that are really old, but most are brand new ideas that I've thought of since last November. Today, I counted them.

Fifty. I have fifty ideas for, not just books, but series. And two of those have been from the last few days since nano started! I don't even want to tell you how many came from just before nano as I was planning.

I swear, I come up with more other ideas about books to write while I'm doing nano than any other time of the year. I spend months editing and don't come up with a single thing, but start planning or writing, and suddenly my brain is tossing out story ideas like I have all the time in the world to sit down and write them. Like my brain wants me to just keep writing first drafts all the time and never move on from it.

Of course, I'm not going to do that. First of all, first drafts don't get published. Especially not mine. They're pretty bad. Pandora had almost three quarters of it rewritten in it's first pass of editing, and I know there are parts that I'll want to fix again, because they're still not sitting quite right with me. And I don't even want to talk about all of the typos and spelling mistakes that I manage to get in my first drafts (I'm sure you've seen some of them, I don't tend to edit my blog posts, sorry).

This nano I've also had to put up with the fact that my brain is now tossing out ideas for books that I've written in the past and want to come back to at some point, but have been shelved for now. (Literally...I got a book shelf). I figured out that one of the first novels I've ever written was all wrong. The main character was too young, she should have been married, and her husband should have been the one getting blackmailed, not her father.

Because I have so much time to go and fix it now.

I'm not complaining, I promise. I know so many writers that honestly don't know what to write. They don't have any ideas. The thing is, at this point in my life, I'm not sure that I”ll ever have enough time to write all of the ideas I have.

Maybe I should look at adopting them out.

Do you have lots of ideas piling up waiting for your attention? How many books have you shelved that you want to get back to?

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Total Word Count: 50,143