Column 14 - Recently I had the experience of having a book walk in the door. Well, not just the book. The concept of the book complete with characters.
When we started writing A Dream Across Time we just thought we were writing a book. Vaguely we thought there might be a continuing story but not a whole saga. We built a home in St. Lucia and it took over our lives. First came the house, then came a travel business focused on the Caribbean and then a saga.
I used to believe that a person could plot their course in life. Now, after all these years I realize that life will often plot our course for us. That is exactly the case with what has developed from our first novel, A Dream Across Time. After A Dream Across Time was finished we began work on what we thought was the second book in the series. It was more of a struggle than the first book. Our lead character,Yvie, was giving us fits. She is a character who would not behave herself in the book and she wouldn't behave for her creators either.
Then one day I went out to run errands which I find really boring and so my mind drifts. At the time we lived way out in the country and so I spent a lot of time on the road. While I was out, the second book walked in the door or at least into my head. Maybe I should have expected it after reading Stephen King's On Writing. After all we were struck by the validity of his belief that writing novels is like unearthing fossils. If we viewed the saga as a fossil entity and that it is unearthed piece by piece, then it is perfectly logical that we were going to find things which were unexpected.
When I got home I laid out for my wife the plot, the characters and found myself detailing what will be the book, A Circle of Dreams. It was clear that we could not write the book we had started until we had written the second. The characters for the third book were begging to be introduced. No, actually, they were demanding to be introduced in a book which lay between the first and the one we had begun work on. What was even more appalling was that we found we had inserted plot elements and characterizations in the first book which were prerequisite to the second book.
And I thought I could lay a course and was in command of it. I really needed to get real.
When we started writing A Dream Across Time we just thought we were writing a book. Vaguely we thought there might be a continuing story but not a whole saga. We built a home in St. Lucia and it took over our lives. First came the house, then came a travel business focused on the Caribbean and then a saga.
I used to believe that a person could plot their course in life. Now, after all these years I realize that life will often plot our course for us. That is exactly the case with what has developed from our first novel, A Dream Across Time. After A Dream Across Time was finished we began work on what we thought was the second book in the series. It was more of a struggle than the first book. Our lead character,Yvie, was giving us fits. She is a character who would not behave herself in the book and she wouldn't behave for her creators either.
Then one day I went out to run errands which I find really boring and so my mind drifts. At the time we lived way out in the country and so I spent a lot of time on the road. While I was out, the second book walked in the door or at least into my head. Maybe I should have expected it after reading Stephen King's On Writing. After all we were struck by the validity of his belief that writing novels is like unearthing fossils. If we viewed the saga as a fossil entity and that it is unearthed piece by piece, then it is perfectly logical that we were going to find things which were unexpected.
When I got home I laid out for my wife the plot, the characters and found myself detailing what will be the book, A Circle of Dreams. It was clear that we could not write the book we had started until we had written the second. The characters for the third book were begging to be introduced. No, actually, they were demanding to be introduced in a book which lay between the first and the one we had begun work on. What was even more appalling was that we found we had inserted plot elements and characterizations in the first book which were prerequisite to the second book.
And I thought I could lay a course and was in command of it. I really needed to get real.
posted by Roger | 4:47 PM
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