Sometimes, relief comes from the strangest places. A few months ago I had a dream. The ending to a story played out in heart-thumping excitement. Like a movie in my head. As soon as I woke up, I did my best to recall the dream, revel in it, before it disappeared. And then I wrote it all down, just for good measure. It’s sitting in a file now, patiently waiting for me to get back to it.
A couple of weeks later, I dreamed the beginning of that story. Again, I enjoyed the afterglow of a good dream. And then, again, I wrote it down, because no matter how convinced you are that you’ll absolutely remember, you probably won’t. Ask me how I know.
The workings of the human brain – my brain – never cease to baffle and amaze me, but here’s what’s even better: With nothing more than a couple of dreams, the thing that I’ve long feared won’t come to pass. You see, my inner chicken kept telling me that once the series I’m working on is written, I’ll probably, nay, certainly, never have another idea for a plot or a character. Ever. Of course it’s bullshit. My inner stalwart knows it, but that chicken’s squawkings can be damn convincing.
But now? Now I’ve exchanged a fear for an idea. A valid idea that gives me a broken-but-strong new protagonist. Just the way I like them. Now that I have that character and an inkling of plot (Swords! Demons!), I have no doubt that I’ll be able to craft it into a satisfying story. All of my stories arise from a character, and even though I don’t yet have a very clear idea of his background and personality and attributes, the core of who he is is clear. And I can work with that. The details, as well as plot and setting, will be revealed in the writing.
And in the meantime, I’ll keep an incubator file (in WorkFlowy, of course). Any little thing that’ll occur to me in relation to the story will go into it. Snippets of dialogue, half-formed ideas, plot lines. Anything that might be even remotely useful or connected. And eventually I’ll sit down and write the story. Maybe another NaNoWriMo project. After all, three of my books have started out that way.
Execution has never been my problem. Once I have an idea for a character, I’m ready to roll. Writer’s block isn’t something I’m concerned about. I know that the story will come. It’s a process I trust implicitly. It’s ideas that are my weak link. Well, hold on. Maybe they’re not a weak link after all. Maybe it’s time to start trusting that once the time’s ripe, a new idea will invariably bubble up from the swamp of my mind.
Just the other day, another character came to me in a meditation. Which, of course, isn’t quite the purpose of a meditation, but, hey, I’ll take it over the usual monkey mind ramblings. I only have a very vague idea of who that character is. He might’ve been me, in a previous life, who knows? I don’t know if he figures in any way into the first character’s story, but there’s an easy way to find out: I’ll just have to write the story.