Chasing Rainbows

As, I believe, the only writer on this blog who doesn't have kids, partner, full time job or all of the above to contend with on a daily basis, I'm going to go out on a limb and say I get far more real world interrupts than everyone else.

Most of my interruptions come from inside my own head.

Here's how it usually happens.

I get an idea for a book. It's a fantastic idea. It's the best idea anyone has ever come up with in the entire course of literary history - honestly, it is!

However, I'm in the middle of writing another story. It's not as good as the story that's going to grow out of that wonderful idea I've just had, but it still needs to be finished. I'm very strict with myself about that. If I start a first draft it has to be finished before I can start another one.

So that amazing story gets put on the back burner until I have time to write it. In the meantime I turn it over in my head. The characters grow, the plot take shape. My belief that this is going to be even better than sliced bread increases too. Meanwhile, I chip away at the other story little by little until it's done.

Then the moment comes. Everything else finished. I can finally start writing the awesome idea for real. I start. The story is even better than I remember, the character are coming to life on the page. All is well with the world.

Then it happens - the interruption.

Not children, not pets, not other people.

Another idea - an even better idea. A new story idea that's all nice and shiny - and a million times better than this boring old idea I'm writing at the moment. How could I have ever thought that old plot was any good at all?

It's cliched and tired and obvious. And the characters who've been bugging me to write about them for months suddenly go into hibernation or refuse to cooperate. And what's coming out on paper is nothing like I thought it would be. There are already sections that I know I'll have to go back and re-write. This old idea really sucks - and not in the fun, fellatio related way.

Obviously, what I should be writing is this really cool, really sparkly new idea. This story would never turn out to be like the old one...

And so the cycle goes around and around and around. A new story inevitably interrupts what I'm trying to do with an existing idea, and I don't think it's ever going to change.

In truth, as annoying as it is when the flow of one idea is interrupted by another, I don't think I'd change it if I could.

When what I'm writing at the moment isn't going as well or as easily as I hoped it would, it's nice to have a pretty new idea to play with. It's nice to have that buzz that says the next story is going to be great.

If I've got to be interrupted, it's nice that it's by a horizon line or a rainbow's end.

I know the temporary perfection of the story idea that interrupts the one I'm working on will never be fulfilled. But the simple fact that it exists for a little while pushes me to keep going, to keep trying, to write faster - to see if I can catch that fleeting little moment and hold onto it for a little while before the next interruption snatches it away.

Yeah, I guess that sort of interruption isn't that bad :-)

Kim Dare.

*****

By the way, I've got a new novella out in an anthology released yesterday. Whispers is a M/f, BDSM, psychic, vampire story. The anthology is called Night of the Senses.

Just in case you're wondering, the idea for Whispers completely interrupted my attempts to write The Gift. In turn, Whispers was interrupted by two different stories that will eventually form part of my Perfect Timing Series.

Such is life, lol.