After three weeks away, I’m home. In my own bed. In my own bath. Bring on the onslaught!
It always amazes me how, during Q&A at bookstore events, invariably some well-meaning audience member will query: “Where do you get your ideas?”
Friends, if you’re like me, that’s not the problem. Ideas are like those striped Christmas mints ubiquitous in the hostess stands of many a restaurant. (In fact, after traveling, I have a pocketful of them in my coat pocket. Along with single-wrapped toothpicks.)
For me, the conundrum is all about which ideas to act upon, and which to toss in recycling. Or even the trash. I see this as the opposite of writer’s block. Call it writer’s glut. Or writer’s curse. This all-too-common assault brought on by three weeks’ holiday, and catalyzed by my first home soak. Oh, how I love a good soak.
For me, the last two ideas-that-became-books came thrumping through the gray of November (there’s a reason why Novel Writing Month is set then, for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere). Both BITTERROOT and THE BEQUEST crystallized after contemplating the themes of reproduction, injustice, death, class, and generational family dysfunction.
Yeah, I’m a dark girl like that.
But themes alone do not a novel make. Ergo, compelling characters. For me, the hardest thing to figure out is: who’s going to tell the story? Who has the most at stake? Who has the most to lose? Who owns the voice that a reader will want to hang with for 300 or 400 pages?
Hearing that voice, the particulars of that voice, requires the banishment of competing voices. Or, as good old Gordon Lish likes to say (I’m paraphrasing here), employing ruthless exclusion in service to the line of flight. Deciding which characters don’t get to sit at the cool kid table of one’s creative endeavor isn’t easy. Especially if you, like me, have a history of rooting for the underdog.
That’s why, over the years, I’ve developed an interview process. It seems the only fair way to vet my story-carriers. And now, because I haven’t posted an “exclusive for my contributing followers” post in a while, cue the paywall! It’s bonus time.