I’ve been tossing a few ideas around of what to write after I conclude the Ladies’ Amateur Sleuth Society series. I want to do another series. Readers seem to like them. Although I still get requests for Poppy’s book on a regular basis. Poor, sweet, Poppy. But yesterday I worked with my critique partner on fleshing out one of the ideas I had. I already had the basic concept that tied the books together and therefore who the hero’s were. Yes, it’s a hero driven series. But you can’t have romance without heroines.

So the next step was to toss out some general ideas of heroines that would create a unique plotline and conflict for each hero, but would keep in the line of the big idea. We came up with three. Then we named them all. Then I looked at archetypes just to get a thumbprint of their character. And right now I’m flying high, thinking I’m pretty brilliant. It will be several months before I’m up for contract again, so I can’t do anything with this idea just yet. It’s stuck percolating in the back of my mind until I send it to my agent.

What comes with a new idea? Total excitement. Adrenaline starts pumping, and scene possibilities out of nowhere start popping into your head. Dialogue snippets, character traits, possible visual attributes all swim about. It’s rather distracting. I still got my writing done yesterday on my current WIP, but it wasn’t easy to switch gears like that. Moreover, I didn’t want to. I wanted to still play with my new toy. It’s pretty and shiny and not broken in any way. At the moment.

I went to sleep and what did I think about? All of it. The marketing, the titles, the covers, how I would pull it all off. It made sleeping difficult. But I still have my current WIP to finish and then one more before I can even write one word on these books. *sigh* So they’re waiting in the wings and my hands are itching to get started on them. Perhaps that will make me write these other two faster.

That’s the beauty of new ideas. They don’t come with all the ick your current idea has grown. The ick is like a fungus that begins to appear after you’ve worked on the idea for a while. After you’ve fleshed out the characters and done your scene outline, after you’ve started writing. And you begin to feel as if the characters are lame, or you’ve written them before, and there’s no sexual tension, and the external plot is boring and has too many holes in it. They just stand around and talk about the same things over and over again. How will this ever feel like a book? Thank God for multiple drafts (in my case) and revisions. Somehow I mange to clean them up and I remind myself of that daily while writing the rough draft. “I can fix this later.” That’s my motto while I write.

So having the excitement of a pretty idea waiting for me as soon as I’m done keeps me going. Keeps me eager. Keeps me excited about writing and about the growth of my career. How about you? How do you come up with your ideas?