If you write stories; if you write stories and let other people read them; if you write stories and have been paid for them and these stories have appeared in print and people other than your mother, your kids and your best friends have read them; if you have had people tell you they like your stories and hope you will continue to write them – then you will understand my endless sigh of relief that an idea for another story which came to mind a few days ago has gathered enough substance around it in those ensuing seconds/minutes/hours to constitute a seed which I can now choose to plant. Sentence-itis! Sentence-itis!
Some – many! – ideas never make that seed stage, let alone germinate. I am always amazed and grateful when they do. Where they spring from is often a mystery: they just seem to be there and I have suddenly noticed them.
The process of an idea 'gathering substance' is fascinating and I imagine there are great similarities and great differences in how other writers go about this. Mostly it is a conscious thing for me; I have to bring the idea to mind and ask myself questions about what would happen next in the story. Then I see if I can answer those questions and if the answers hold together in a story I would want to tell others.
Something like that.
This differs greatly from when I actually plant the 'seed' and commit to 'growing' a story. Then it is more about providing the habitat, the soil, the conditions, the intervention, the fallowing, the careful and gentle observing….. I find this time rather unpleasant, sort of like starting into labour and knowing that the "whose idea was this anyway?" and "okay, I just need a break for a bit, like a bunch of good garage sales or a long nap" and "velcro! velcro! velcro!" are not options. That 'baby' is going to get 'born' and I have agreed to participate.
For now the seed is formed and I can let it rest for as long as I choose. Or so I think. At times it has suddenly started to sprout and that is that. Then it is no longer a conscious decision to 'work' on the story. It 'works' on me. I will wake up suddenly with a phrase or a scene in my mind and 'tell it' to myself over and over, with variations, edits, whittlings. In an awake state the sight of a woman passing on the street will trigger something in the story which is now enhanced by what the woman is wearing or how she is walking or how she has tilted her head or by overhearing what she has said to someone or……….. It is a powerful distraction and people who know me are alerted to the fact and at least understand that it is powerful and also temporary. I say to myself, "Get a grip – this isn't brain surgery or a life and death situation," but the dress on the woman or her gait or…… has gripped me and I feel some responsibility or something to capture it and get it into the story.
For now it is still a seed and I may be risking the appearance of a shoot by saying that it part of the series about two 'sleuths', a man and his granddaughter, in the Fifties. Three of them have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. In this story Chet and Emily are sitting in the garden and she is….. no, wait…..deep breath…..put the 'seed' in the freezer of my mind and go and do some knitting…..
Posted on March 20, 2012 at 12:00 AM |