What if?.... The question gets me in the mood every time.To write.
Have you ever had this happen to you? You're walking down the street or sitting in a crowded room, watching what's going on, involved in something or other. Just minding your own business. When, all of a sudden, you see or hear something and wonder for a split second...what if?
What if...? You ask yourself. And, in a split second, you mind swirls around this intriguing idea until - BAM! - you've thought of a story idea for a novel. Or that article you need to write. Poem. Whatever your medium.
If that's ever happened to you, or you've been waiting for inspiration, go out and search for it. Or just let it happen. For my first book - Waiting for Paint to Dry - I was in the airport, trying to hurry through security, and all of a sudden I had to ask myself...what if? What if I were a character in a novel and this very thing that is happening to me in real life happened to her? What would her story be? How would she react? What would have happened right before this? After? What if...? And that's how it happened :)
For my next book - Caught by the Sun - even though it's the sequel to Waiting for Paint to Dry, the idea that sparked the story for the second book came from a what if moment in my own life. I was stacking firewood with my husband, got a piece of wood in my eye, he had to get close to help get it out...once out, there were sparks - oh la la ;) - and I thought, hmmm...what if?... and then - BAM! - my next novel idea was born!
Next month is November and I've decided to do NaNoMo - National Novel Writing Month - this year! Yes, I'm still editing novel #1, but I've learned a VERY important lesson in doing so. Don't take too long writing the first draft because editing it to the point of it being perfect to send out to agents takes sooooo long. Writing a novel in a month sounds like the best plan to me. My goal is going to be 50K words. I've never done it before, but I'm excited!
And once November is over, I'm going to put novel #2 aside, and finish my edits for novel #1. When I'm done with that, I'll read through my atrocious first draft that I wrote during NaNoMo and go from there. All first drafts suck. Why not churn it out in a quick, fun way? If you've never NaNoMo'ed before, check it out. We can be writer buddies ;)
Oh, and check out the synopsis I wrote for Caught by the Sun. I'm super proud of it and super exited to get started!
Hope to see you there :)
