Percolating

One of the things that I heard a lot from authors at Bouchercon was that they had ideas for a long time before they actually got to writing the story.

They could be hard at work on one book, and thinking about the ideas that they might be using later one. Michael Connelly, the featured author, was clear that he’s thinking ahead for what’s coming up in the life of his main character – Det. Harry Bosch – and is letting that simmer in his brain for a while before putting the ideas on paper.

With the start of NaNoWriMo less than a week away now, I realized I’m not ready to start with the idea I’ve been thinking about. The past few weeks of gearing up for NaNo have been really productive. I know a lot of things about my characters that I didn’t know before. I have new characters and pieces of plot that will be great.

I know now what medical condition Timot suffers from. I know what his nickname is. I understand some of what drives Sai. I discovered why Artair is so angry.

These are good things to know. And I could barrel ahead with this plot for NaNo, but I think that’s a bad choice. I’m not ready to tell this story. My subconscious hasn’t had long enough to work on this, to figure out what truly motivates them. It’s the depth of the story that’s missing. I could put my characters through a series of actions during November, but I know that the result would not be what I’m looking for.

I don’t think I can write at the pace that NaNo demands with this plot and these characters. They are too young, too fragile in my head to waste on this frenetic month. It just doesn’t feel right to push 50,000 words with these folks. Not yet.

More to come this week on NaNo and what my plans are.