Tenners Tell All: The genesis of our novels
Is there any question writers get asked more often than “where do you get your ideas?”
I think the askers are hoping that there’s a secret mail-order idea shop, and if they could only coax the address from someone, they’d soon have the mysterious envelope: “Alright” the elegant handwriting of the muse would tell them, “there’s this boy who’s a wizard, see, and he doesn’t know he’s a wizard, but one day he gets this letter inviting him to wizard school...” And then you just have to write the thing, which is (as all non-writers know) the easy part.
It doesn’t work like that. The genesis of a book is - well, it’s mysterious. It’s alchemical. And it’s a chance fact that strikes an important excitement. It’s an accumulation of quirky obsessions that suddenly transform into a first line, a fully-formed character.
At least, that’s how it works for me.
I remember the exact moment I started my novel PLAIN KATE. I had just finished reading a three-volume set of Russian fairy tales. I’d been talking to my dad about his latest woodworking project. And I was on a plane. (In fact I was returning home from a seven-cities-in-five-days book tour; I was so exhausted that I was starting to have visions. ) The plane took off. I leaned my head on the cold plexiglass window and watched the plane separate from its shadow; watched the shadow shrinking on the ground, fading away. I blinked a few times. Then I took out my notebook and wrote:
“A long time ago, in a market town by a looping river, there lived an orphan girl named Plain Kate.”
She was fully formed in my head: Katerina Svetlana, called Plain Kate: a girl with a gift for woodcarving, who is forced to give her shadow to a wandering musician, up to no good.... Her talking cat, though, came from the secret mail-order idea shop. And, no, I can’t share the address. Sorry.
So, tell all, Tenners: what’s the genesis of your book or work in progress? How does it work for you? Does the secret idea shop require SASEs?
I think the askers are hoping that there’s a secret mail-order idea shop, and if they could only coax the address from someone, they’d soon have the mysterious envelope: “Alright” the elegant handwriting of the muse would tell them, “there’s this boy who’s a wizard, see, and he doesn’t know he’s a wizard, but one day he gets this letter inviting him to wizard school...” And then you just have to write the thing, which is (as all non-writers know) the easy part.
It doesn’t work like that. The genesis of a book is - well, it’s mysterious. It’s alchemical. And it’s a chance fact that strikes an important excitement. It’s an accumulation of quirky obsessions that suddenly transform into a first line, a fully-formed character.
At least, that’s how it works for me.
I remember the exact moment I started my novel PLAIN KATE. I had just finished reading a three-volume set of Russian fairy tales. I’d been talking to my dad about his latest woodworking project. And I was on a plane. (In fact I was returning home from a seven-cities-in-five-days book tour; I was so exhausted that I was starting to have visions. ) The plane took off. I leaned my head on the cold plexiglass window and watched the plane separate from its shadow; watched the shadow shrinking on the ground, fading away. I blinked a few times. Then I took out my notebook and wrote:
“A long time ago, in a market town by a looping river, there lived an orphan girl named Plain Kate.”
She was fully formed in my head: Katerina Svetlana, called Plain Kate: a girl with a gift for woodcarving, who is forced to give her shadow to a wandering musician, up to no good.... Her talking cat, though, came from the secret mail-order idea shop. And, no, I can’t share the address. Sorry.
So, tell all, Tenners: what’s the genesis of your book or work in progress? How does it work for you? Does the secret idea shop require SASEs?