A Novel Idea
My first dream to evolve into a book happened when I was eleven years old. I remember waking from one of those vivid early morning dreams where you don’t quite know up from down; I’d been a princess atop my talking horse. Naturally, we’d gone on a quest to save the kingdom. Monsters, an evil wizard and a magical artifact only I could wield—I was hooked. I wanted to read it. I started writing that book soon after, finished it and loved it. But it’d taken a long time and a lot of effort, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to go through all that again.
I didn’t seriously write again for over a decade.
I had dreams over that time I would obsess over, thinking “Damn, that would make a fantastic story”, but I never wrote those ideas down, never picked up a notebook or a laptop. And if you’re anything like me, if you don’t write it down THAT INSTANT, it’s gone forever, back to whatever void it came from.
Fast forward and there comes the day I read a book I love SO MUCH, but it just…ends. It sidestepped the quest. Sure, there was a battle and resolution and a HEA, but it dodged the adventure! And I could not stop thinking about it. Dramatic probably, but I’m also the person that reached THAT part in Allegiant, immediately broke out in a cold sweat, closed the cover oh-so-careful, and then ran into another room and scream-cried into a pillow and didn’t read another book for 3 months.
Actually…now that I think about it…this might be where my self-inflicted demand to always write a happy ending came from. Hmm… See, this is why people journal.
Anyway, back to the original topic. I drove out to my parents’, dusted off (literally) that old manuscript I’d written, and I rewrote it. I queried that manuscript, got some great feedback from literary agents, but in the meantime, I’d had another dream. Except now I’d experienced actual industry professionals telling me:
Hey…you’re pretty good at this.
In the dream I stood in a dark alley. I could hardly see where it led because of the rain. It was cold and foggy, and there was a pile of bodies at my feet, horrifying slits across their pupils. I wrote that book so fast (by my standards anyway) and couldn’t believe how quickly this necromancer named Lux had come to life. I LOVED her. I queried that book too. Once again: Great feedback. Even better than before. Agents loved the story, but alas the YA market was “crowded” or they represented a book “similar”. It was upsetting to hear, but I decided to wait on querying it further.
Only to wake up again with another idea. Quite the pattern here, I know. I realized soon after that I have a bit of a problem with falling in love with my work-in-progress and leaving my previous love behind. Six inspiring dreams later, and five completed books to show for it, I’ve decided to finally address my "squirrel” tendencies. Lux’s story will be the first, but I plan to eventually get them all out into the world. And as long as I keep having these dreams I can’t ignore, I won’t stop anytime soon.
