Summertime means a break a from school and allows for brain to dwell on things not (directly) related to academics. Dwelling is not always a good thing since it usually equates to keeping me from sleeping, either getting me out of bed late and night or too early in the morn because the brain is simply too restless. What’s got me thinking right now? Novels. Too many of them.

I have one novel completed and revised once. Last August, I received a bunch of great feedback on it and, after mulling things over for awhile, I think I know what changes need to be made. I plan on these being the last major changes before I start shopping it around. When that will be, I don’t really know. So I’ve been thinking about how to incorporate those changes, since I like to have a pretty good idea of what direction I’ll be going in before I start editing because everything needs to tie together by the end.

I broke ground on the beginnings of another (unrelated) novel a few days ago set in an alternate Pacific Northwest around 1870. This novel-in-my-head is the primary culprit for keeping my brain agitated. The basic idea has been rolling around in my head for about two years now, and is part of a trilogy of alternate history, pseudo-Western novels. At this point, I have a good 60-70% of the first novel outlined in my head. While you might note that this is well under 100%, one of the lessons I learned from writing my first novel is that this is probably a good amount to get started. Most of the major events are nailed down, the story has an arc, and I think I know what I’m trying to get at by writing it. Most of this will change during the actual writing, I suspect.

As for the second book in the trilogy (third book on the brain, if you’re counting) that takes place in the Southwestern desert around 1870, I probably have about 20-30% figured out in my head, including some major events that happen at the beginning, middle, and end. Many times when I’m reading, watching TV, or just cruising around, I note things ideas or situations that would fit with this novel. Ideally, I’ll get up to that 60% by the time I get to writing it. The third book in the trilogy is very nebulous, probably only 10% imagined at this point, and takes place in a far-future surrogate Minneapolis. I look forward to imagining more about it.

That’s four novels, only one of which has been written and still needs work. To make matters worse, after buying my story “Eskhara” JJA recommended writing a novel in the same world since it seemed so fertile. Alas, he was right—and early in the morning or late at night I find myself plugging holes and building bridges between sections of the story. Alarmingly, I would guess I’m at the 40-50% point as far as imagining a full-fledged novel; for those of you keeping up, that’s pretty close to “go” time. I feel like I could crank it out in no time.

Of course, you can’t write five novels at once. Or at least I can’t, nor do I want to. My plan (if you can call it that) is to finish revisions on the completed novel before putting significant work into novel #2. This is complicated somewhat by having a new baby, needing to finish my coursework, and taking my preliminary PhD exams. Once the baby is not so new and classes have gone away (for good! yay!) then I should have time (for the first time in about four years) to really focus on writing. As long as I show up to work regularly, I think I can put some serious dents in writing some of these novels.

The hard part will be keeping the short stories at bay during all of this. Ideas are like weeds on the brain: if you don’t get them out by the base, then they just keep coming back. For a long while, novels were too big for me to imagine so I (subconsciously) stuck to writing short stories. Now it seems most ideas I get are novel-length. Lucky me.

Current Mood: Daunted |