Frightening

I cleaned off my whiteboard today.

It's had Book 3, with the two o's dotted to look like eyes, and sinister eyebrows above for several months now. So long, in fact, that I had to get some solvent out to clean it off. That's what you get for buying cheap marker pens.

book three was always going to be hard to swallow
Over the months things have come and gone. The most memorable for me was probably Melyn=Beulah's dad. That was a revelation. I'd been writing the damn story for three years and only then did I realise that the main baddie had been seduced by the lonely queen, resulting in the birth of a daughter, who then inherited the throne. I'm still not sure whether he realises who she is, even though he raised her until she was old enough to take the throne, and moulded her into his own evil little monster. Fantasy. Go figure.

But all that's done for now. I've taken the notes for book four, and the list of things that need to be finessed in books one and two. Now it's time to wipe the slate clean and start on something else. Something in the wider crime genre, perhaps.

But first there's that blank canvas, that 60 by 90 cm rectangle of infinite possibilities, to start to fill with random ideas and connections.

It's a little scary, really.

Comments

I'm in the midst of plotting my new book too, and it's making me tear my friggin' hair out!
Sandra Ruttan said…
Pre plotting?

You two are both mad. Just write.
Stuart MacBride said…
Mmm, all that open white space – the possibilities are infinite. You can go and play, unfettered by what’s already been written. This has to be the best part of any book – making shit up.

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