Next Story Idea

I found some of the IQ points turned up again once the little darling was in day care/school. I guess they find it noisy around the house until the small guy is gone.

Having a new idea can be just the thing to get me to finish work on an older project.

That's such an exiting time when the first germ of a new story hits you and begins to grow.

I have no idea what I'm going to write next. I'm still too early in this one. But I can tell you--having no background in history, the thought of tackling a story in a different era/place than my current one is too overwhelming. I think I'll be staying in ancient Greece for a little while, if I decide to stick with historicals.

Good luck!

Oh, my, do I have a list of ideas for future stories! I probably have a couple dozen so far on a running list. Some are more fleshed out than others. When I was trying to decide what to do next, I read through my 'list' to see what struck my fancy. And then ended up starting research on something completely new, not from my 'list.'

I hear you about getting the most out of the research you've already done, c.e.. All of these ideas that I have, and I think all are late 19th/early 20th century. Which is why I haven't been able to just pluck something from my 'list' for the reversal challenge.

lkp said:

I found some of the IQ points turned up again once the little darling was in day care/school.

Click to expand...

Ooh, that's good to know! I thought they were gone for good!

I have one in nursery, but replaced her almost immediately with another one.

I love and hate that moment when another story bites. I went today to figure out a short story and it's trying really hard to turn into a full-on novel. Though it's exciting to think about, it'd mean doing loads more research on things like the history of Dunfermline and Fife, and my Dad has all those books at the moment. This is why I'm trying to work on older projects at the moment in fact, things like my Civil War pieces, which have been sitting for ages waiting for edits or to be finished. I'm going to try and get those at least finished in a first draft before I start working on loads of newer projects, in case I end up losing track of those halfway through too. I just have visions of having a thousand half-novels done and no complete ones.

Still, it is a great feeling when the idea starts to solidify and you feel your brain starting to fire off all the possibilities. Good luck with it!

Yes, same here! Even though I've had the idea for a while, there just comes a point when it reaches up and grabs me by the shirttails.

My list of ideas is sometimes just the barest hint of an idea, born from a footnote in a history book I read or an event on a History Channel program or something. Some of the ideas were quite insistent when I thought of them, but I was writing Repose at the time and didn't want to stop for another project, so I fleshed out some of those more insistent story ideas so that they would leave me alone.

I see story ideas everywhere! Just last night I was looking through a book of photographs and came across a photo of the girls who used to follow the fishing boats all season around the north of Scotland in the early part of the 20th century, working as gutters and packers. Right there in that picture was a story idea!