Struck by an IDEA

Ever since the conclusion of the WriMoFoFo challenge in mid-July, my writing productivity has declined somewhat. This is partially due to the fact that I’m hunting for a job (a time-consuming and mind-numbing process), but mostly due to my decision to edit/revise/expand the opening section of this new novel and the conviction that there has been something missing.

I’ve been tinkering and prodding and re-reading and rewriting and trying to figure out what the problem is. Or, more accurately, how best to achieve all the things I want to achieve with this opening sequence, which launches the story. And I am simply not capable of going on with the rest of this novel until I am satisfied with its foundations. Everything depends (in my view) on the setup. I need to know what happens – and it has to be good.

And then, this morning, I had an epiphany. (I do so love epiphanies.) I was walking to meet family for a morning coffee, mulling stuff over, when an IDEA struck. It needs fleshing out, but it simultaneously solves several problems: how to demonstrate (rather than explain) a key aspect of cultural ideology that underpins the entire story, how to inject more action and conflict into an opening sequence that was running a bit too flat, and how to effectively utilise a couple of characters I’d blithely inserted into the opening scenes, but had little idea of how to leverage.

Now I am simply itching to get back into it.