Fuckity fuckity fuck.
I’m all jammed up, halfway between an idea and a story. I’ve got several of the elements in place: mysterious back story, dark, claustrophobic setting, twisted cast of characters all lusting after one another. I have an inkling. Now if I could only find a plot. 
This is the agony of the first draft. I am not a natural storyteller. I don’t have a hundred fully hatched stories in my head, just waiting for me to find the time to attend to them. I have to invest a serious amount of energy and research into finding even one workable plot that’s right for my genre, for my readership (if there is one; we can but hope), and for me as a writer. While other writers are turning out story after story from their colorful and blissfully overactive imaginations (I’m looking at you, August), I am grinding my molars to come up with one.
And I desperately want to write. I’ve got time now and energy and the willpower to slam down a draft, and I can’t come up with anything resembling a psycho thriller plot for the present-day timeline. I’ve been at this problem for a month and still . . . nothing. But the back story and characters are too juicy to abandon. There is something here.
* * *
Last night I wrote the lines above and set them aside to finish the post for this morning. And when I woke up, holy mother of god, the light shone down upon me and delivered my story. I almost fell down the stairs trying to get to my notebook so I could write it down. My hands are shaking. It’s possible I will pee my pants.
Now I’m turning the idea this way and that, looking for cracks in the premise. Please dear lord may this work.
What do you do with a hot idea? Outline it? Flesh it out? Or write like hell?
I’m still waiting for my first hot idea. Averil, get it down baby. If you pee in your pants so be it. One must suffer for one’s art.
You aren’t waiting for a hot idea, Swiss Miss, you’re globetrotting your way to bestsellerdom, one country at a time.
Outline it with as many details as I know so it will leave me alone, grit my teeth, and go back to my current WIP like a bored housewife who is extremely tempted by the attractive, young washing machine repairman but knows her husband is the better choice . . . for now . . .
Speaking of attractive repairmen, I will say that August got off lucky this time, because I was gearing up for a mayday email begging for his help. I’m trying to be a big girl and resist the urge to clutch at his boot, but good lord does it get frustrating sometimes.
I write it in rough, rough outline, so it is real and solid and I can’t forget about it. And then I noodle on it and noodle on it and add things and erase them and add more. But the core bit, the idea that makes it real, it always stays. And it screams at me — write me, dammit.
Good on you for your revelation. It’s a good day.
Yes, it’s that core bit that gets its teeth into you. It’s heartbreaking when the pieces won’t come together and you have to abandon a good idea, which is where I was headed until this morning. What a relief to have broken through.
Never abandon a good idea and your good ideas will never abandon you.
“What do you do with a hot idea? Outline it? Flesh it out? Or write like hell?”
I make a note of it and put it in the bin with all the other hot ideas. When I finish whatever project I’m working on and it’s time for the next project, I go to the bin, lift the lid, and peer in. Whatever hot idea is glowing most brightly is the one I snatch up and begin working on.
I’m glad your story came to you. There’s a lot to be said for sleeping on it, huh?
See? You’re the kind of writer who makes me insane with envy. A bin of hot ideas, damn your eyes. And here I’ve been standing with tin cup in hand.
Write like hell! I don’t think to hard, just let that mother flow out like hot lava. I’m not much of a planner though so when it hits me I go. Hot ideas are like candy; I gotta gobble it up before I decide it’s bad for me and I shouldn’t be eating it. Wait… That made no sense. That could explain why I’ve not completed anything yet.
Yay to you for finding your hot idea.
Oh I’m with you. Write first, ask questions later. Tonight I’ll be curling up with a fresh notebook and off we go.
Write like hell before you lose the damn thing.
Word. Now the question will be, can I write fast enough?
I write down my hot idea then let it gestate a bit. Generally, if I try to write just from an idea, I stall out and get frustrated. I keep getting hot ideas for that story cycle I’m working on, but they’re all too immature to send out into the world just yet.
Interesting. I’ve come to realize that the biggest frustrations I experience in writing come from inertia. As long as I’m moving forward, I’m okay. But when I get stuck, I come slowly unhinged, with a claustrophobic tickle in the center of my chest, as if I am physically bound to some immovable object. Absolutely maddening.
The second draft is easier. So you have that to look forward to, at least!
And then I’ll be bitching about some entirely new set of problems. Remind me why we do this, again?
Oh, I just had the EXACT same though. As soon as this one’s done, I’m doing the next one FOR THE MONEY. It will be third in my series that actuall sells, and I will think of the $$ at every step of the way. “Why am I doing this?” Bashes head on keyboard. “Oh, right, the money. It will pay for my coffee habit.” Or whatever. I haven’t even written that book and I already hate it. I hate it. It’s stupid. I’m not even sure what the idea is, but I’m sure it’s stupid.
Yeah, this is me at the end of a project.
Hmm. Writing pays for the coffee habit. But would there be a coffee habit if not for all that writing?
Glad you found your plot this morning. That felt so good to read. I know what it’s like, when it falls out of the sky and finds you. I suppose we all do.
These days, I have to write down important parts because I’m certain now to forget. I forgot the title of my serial last week, a few hours after noting how perfect it was. I had to retrace a few steps through the computer (steps that I could barely name) to find the episode of Nova that had delivered it and certain other notions to me in the first place. A few days after that, I had to write down the bones of a possibly far off pivotal scene that came to me in a bunch late at night. I suppose I would be an outliner, but it doesn’t come to me in a straight line, so how would that work?
I think I flesh it out and start writing like hell, all at once.
Plot doesn’t come to me in a straight line, either. It’s sort of like, Oh, this would be cool at the end, that would be a good pivot in the middle, and what about this weird back story? It’s a fucking mess, I tell you.
I think it matters a lot less how you do it than THAT you do it.
And you are doing it.
Just keep doing that, and you’ll be fine.
I hope so, because I’m confused as hell about almost everything to do with writing and I seem to keep walking in circles.
I’ve been working on the same story for so long, I have no idea what I’ll do when I finish.
I love the focus and determination that you bring to the table, Ms. Dean. You’ve come a long way, Baby!
You’re giving me too much credit. I’m all over the place.
Excited for you! Ideas elude me in the same manner. And when I do get one, it’s a slippery sucker. I write down all aspects of an idea as they come to me, so if I can’t sit and write it all out right then and there, I know where I was headed with it.
Why ARE they so slippery, anyway? We get other ideas all the time, like what to make for dinner or what to buy grandma for her birthday, and those never go anywhere. But a story idea? Blink and you miss it.
I can’t wait to read your book. If I send you a copy, will you sign it for me?
Are you kidding? I’ll be like the organizer of a children’s party, holding contests in which everyone wins, just to have an excuse to send those suckers out. No one will be safe from the smut invasion.
But all that will have to wait awhile: pub date January 2014.
Oh, I know it well–the excitement and the frustration. For me, I tend to write snippet of scenes that I am particularly jazzed about, to see if I can flesh out a story through those thumbnails, then I write feverishly. I am so glad you are on the other of the processes and riding the wave, my friend!
Er–I meant process, singular. Talk about getting feverish!!
The fever is contagious.
I did the snippet-writing thing last time and though I did come out of it with a book that worked, I ended up writing all the juicy scenes first and having to slog through the rest of it afterward. I had hoped to avoid the dessert-before-vegetables scenario this time around, but I have a feeling I’m headed straight for the cream puffs without eating my peas and carrots.
Plots are much easier for me now. I really think a few things start to — eventually — become second nature after you’ve done it enough. As stuck as you were, I bet your prior experience has already helped get you unstuck. Well, that, and your angels.