How do I know? Because my Muse has been chattering away a mile a minute.
Maybe it would be more proper to say my Muse is bored?
This happens when I’m doing a lot of mundane things, like working. I’ve had a lot of client work recently, formatting ebooks and getting them loaded for distribution, and doing a site audit for another client.
On top of that I’ve been helping my wife with a lot of tasks. We’re cleaning out the house, trying to get rid of most of the stuff in it. Also, my wife has a lot of medical appointments I take her to and then back home again.
My Muse gets bored doing all these things. When she gets bored, she starts throwing ideas at me. Character ideas, story ideas, dialogue ideas ….
As she chatters, things start to self-organize and consolidate. Characters meet up, or run into each other and a story starts to form. Locations where the characters hang out get created out of nothing. More characters join in. They start telling me about other things in the environment. Sometimes they tell me what they, or other characters, are doing behind the scenes. Before I know it, a story universe is started and growing. I’m lucky if I can get to a pad of paper and a pen, or the computer keyboard, so I can start getting all the ideas down before they get lost.
I figure if an idea is strong enough, it will survive until I get it recorded. If it doesn’t, maybe it wasn’t time for that idea. It is probably buried back in the soil my Muse tends garden in, germinating until it sprouts again at a better time later.
If my Muse is not throwing new ideas at me, she is reworking old ideas. These are usually longer works, like series. Sometimes they are ideas for a series of short stories, or comics. Usually a series of novels. Series are good. If a reader gets hooked on one, they will most likely buy and read all of them. As long as I can keep up the quality, the readers will keep reading. Hopefully that means I’ll be able to keep writing and making a living at it.
What about you, dear reader? Do you read series, or just stand-alones? Leave a comment and let me know.
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