"Can you tell what it is yet?"

This is essentially how all my characters and all my books start off... I have some vague ideas and make notes on them - character traits, individual scenes I can see, snippets of dialogue - but the character isn't fully formed, and neither is the plot!

I keep working on them. I keep seeing more and more of the character; keep seeing more scenes; keep hearing more snippets of dialogue. I write it all down. I let it brew. And slowly, slowly, the jumble of parts make sense. The character starts to invade my head and chirrup at me. I sit down with index cards and start wrestling the plot into some semblance of order.

Recently, it's all been far too quiet in my head. Unnervingly so. There's usually a cacophony of competing voices - different characters from different books, trying to be so loud that I write about them next. Not so much right now.

The jumble of crocheted parts in the picture above will become a gift for a dear friend, though at the moment, it looks like nothing. Likewise, there are two characters just starting to form in my head, though I'm not sure who they are or where they belong. I'm just writing it all down, waiting for it to brew. Hoping the cacophony will return in time. Trying to accept that maybe, just maybe, my brain has too much to deal with right now and that I am far from over the death of my father.

In the meantime, Wimbledon is over and I have some audiobooks to record, so it's back to the tent!