{"id":6497,"date":"2021-05-07T12:19:02","date_gmt":"2021-05-07T11:19:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/townhouse\/articles\/finding-the-red-thread\/"},"modified":"2021-05-07T12:19:02","modified_gmt":"2021-05-07T11:19:02","slug":"finding-the-red-thread","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/finding-the-red-thread\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding the red thread"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the strangest experiences in any author\u2019s life arrives the moment they sign their first two-book deal. (And yes: fiction is normally sold in chunks of two. There\u2019s no rigorous logic operating there, except that the first book is the one that attracted the publisher and the second one gives them another opportunity to profit from the success of the first. It also, incidentally, gives them the opportunity to compound their loss if the first book loses money, as most first books do. And yes: Publishing Logic is not really the same thing as actual Logic-Logic.)<\/p>\n

Anyway: we were talking about strangeness. And your first book almost certainly came to you in a rush of inspiration. Yes! I have to write that story. My head is full of these characters, these events, and I have to set them down.<\/em><\/p>\n

That opening burst of inspiration eventually produced a manuscript, some rejections, an acceptance and a book deal. Well done you.<\/p>\n

But it also produces, right now, the expectation \u2013 indeed, the contractual obligation \u2013 that you will write another book of the same standard.<\/p>\n

Yikes! That inspiration? Where did it come from? How do you invoke it? How do you ask it to strike again, in the exact same spot as before, and in a timely enough way that you can meet the date written into your contract?<\/p>\n

The ask seems impossible. Seems \u2013 and sometimes is. I know a couple of authors whose second books simply didn\u2019t meet the levels of their first. In one case, I know the author simply bashed out a serviceable but uninspired second novel because she didn\u2019t know what else to do. Her career never recovered.<\/p>\n

But there are solutions. There are ways for you to invoke that inspiration. To find it reliably and, as it were, to order.<\/p>\n

The trick is to forget about the bolt of lightning. That\u2019s not what you\u2019re looking for. You\u2019re searching for the tickle of interest, a quickening of interest, the red thread lying in the blue.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a news story that tickled me today:<\/p>\n

The sheriff\u2019s office announced Monday that [a woman from\u2019 Salt Lake County], who had been missing since before Thanksgiving, had been found alive in an area not far from where she was camping. Authorities said the woman, who had yet to be publicly identified, \u201chad lost a significant amount of weight and was weak\u201d when she was found. She was lauded by the sheriff\u2019s office as \u201cresourceful,\u201d living off grass, moss and water from a river.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWe now believe she knowingly chose to remain in the area over the months since November 2020,\u201d the sheriff\u2019s office said in a news release.<\/em><\/p>\n

The bit I love about that is the grass and the moss. It\u2019s such a great novelistic detail. \u201cLiving off squirrels, edible tubers and insects\u201d would have given a totally different and (to me) less interesting tale.<\/p>\n

Or another example:<\/p>\n

I was with a friend yesterday, who told me that she\u2019d had a spate of burst tyres on her car. Each time she had a burst tyre, she got a call the next day from her (rather dodgy) ex, asking how she was. When she became suspicious at these coincidences, she checked her car and found a tracking device fixed to the inside rim of her wheel arch.<\/p>\n

Or \u2013\u00a0<\/p>\n

Well, when I was wondering what to write about for my last book, I started browsing the website of the National Crime Agency and other similar outfits. There, I saw some references to antiquities fraud, which intrigued me. That criss-crossed with the idea that King Arthur was a genuine figure of the early Welsh Dark Ages. And what if \u2026?<\/p>\n

What you notice here is that the story never arrives fully formed. It doesn\u2019t even really present itself as a story, exactly. Not even the raw material for a story. At most, it presents as a kind of doorway into something. A portal.<\/p>\n

It is your task to bundle your way through that opening. To be active, not passive.<\/p>\n

So the woman in Utah with the moss and the grass: why was she there? What was it like for her? Was she running from something? Or to something? Who missed her? Who was looking for her?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have much interest in what the actual answers to those questions are. Personally, I tend to discard the actual facts of any real-world story pretty quickly. It\u2019s your answers that matter, not the actual facts of the case.<\/p>\n

Take that friend with the dodgy ex. The person in question threw the tracker away, changed her phone number, cut any kind of contact with the nutter. That was the end of her story, but your story would leave the actual facts almost immediately. Maybe she put a tracker on his car? Or started to mess with his head by popping her tracker onto the side of a lorry bound for France. Or \u2026?<\/p>\n

The moral here, really, is that life \u2013 and your reading, and your existing interests \u2013 already furnish you with a million ideas for stories, far more than you could ever write.<\/p>\n

Your task is to notice those trembles of interest, then explore actively. Discard anything that doesn\u2019t open out into something yet more inviting. Explore the pathways left open as deeply and actively as you can. \u201cActively\u201d here means reading. It means writing. It means starting to write notes on possible stories.<\/p>\n

Inspiration can strike anyone, anywhere. But it only kindles fire when you\u2019re at your desk, ready and working.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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