Tightrope walking...


I both love it and hate it when A New Book starts prickling away in my brain. I love it because it feels fresh and exciting and I'm curious to know where it will go and how it will turn out. I hate it when it starts chiselling away at my brain at a time when I am already overloaded with other books that need finishing/editing/writing!

I'm always scared that if I don't make any notes or write at least a little bit about The New Book, that it will vanish, escaping my brain like a Will o' the Wisp. But, boy, it can be a fine balance between 'getting some of it captured so I don't lose it' and 'oh look, here I am at the end of a first draft'!

As I said in last week's post, The New Book is serious enough to have got its Own Notebook. I spent a while researching the location and the house in which it will be set, plus getting a few other ideas out of my head, and suddenly, the five or six pages that I scribbled on the train home a fortnight ago have morphed into almost 30 pages of a B5 notebook. I'm treading a very thin line between getting enough down that I don't forget it, and disappearing down the rabbit hole and only re-emerging when I've a first draft in my hand.

I've come to the conclusion that I might just have to write two books at once.

But... that way, madness lies, doesn't it?

I'm hoping not (though enough people suspect I'm a bit mad a lot of the time already). I've tried to make a bargain with myself that I have to have done x amount of work on the book I'm meant to be working on, before I get to play with The New Book. It's a carrot and stick approach! My aim is to parallel process, but not to get beyond chapter outlines in The New Book until I've cleared off The Trilogy! I suspect reality will be that I have both The Trilogy and The New Book on the go at the same time.

There was an author who always had at least two typewriters set up, so that if he reached a tricky bit with one book, he would switch desk and work on the other. I think I may end up doing something similar.

Now I just need to find a new desk...


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