There’s this guy. He’s an adrenaline junkie. The woman’s a massage therapist. They meet and… and… and… well of course they fall in love. That’s a given. But it won’t last (or will it?). And then there’s something about traveling from Montana to Maine and jumping out of a million airplanes. His name’s Elias… no J.P., and hers is Ellie. No. Allison. And of course they both have secrets—his involves feeling responsible for someone’s death, maybe an ex-lover. And hers…well that’s more hazy. Maybe something about her pioneer grandmother. That’s it. Then I’ll write a dual storyline. Yeah. That’s good.
I’m farther along than it looks, but that’s kind of my new work-in-progress in a nutshell, in the stage I like to call “cooking.” With a couple of novels under my belt (pre-published, querying, in the drawer, etc.), this is a familiar feeling. The incubation, idea stage, when everything’s running through my mind a mile a minute, but nothing’s quite jelled enough to write. Soon. But not yet.
This cooking, pre-writing, is not really planning, not outlining. I’m cooking, stirring, tasting everything in my mind. When it’s ready to write, to commit a first draft to paper, I’ll know it. Until then, here’s my recipe for cooking a book.[pullquote]I’m cooking, stirring, tasting everything in my mind. When it’s ready to write, to commit a first draft to paper, I’ll know it. Until then, here’s my recipe for cooking a book.[/pullquote]
Take the dog to the vet. Like I did this morning. I love our vet. Renee has become a friend. Our lab Abby is what you’d call a frequent flyer. She has terrible arthritis, is on a zillion (after today, a zillion and one) meds, and she is the darling of the vet office. Today, since I was cooking, I felt comfortable staying as long as Renee would let me so I could listen to her stories—mine her for stories. She tells great stories, which of course gets me thinking.
(Mini) renovate the bathroom. Last week before our daughter and three friends breezed through for a visit (recent college grads, they met up in Maine for a mini-reunion), my husband decided we needed to “spruce up” the bathroom. This quickly escalated into not just painting but re-plastering, grouting, and gorilla-gluing loose floor tiles (don’t ask). This made me realize no one in my book will ever renovate anything. Not ever.
Get stung by (a lot of) hornets. Yes, this really happened. Turns out my husband decided to test that old idiom “don’t poke a hornet’s nest” but forgot to tell me until I was on the porch surrounded by a swarm of [Read more…]
