Distractions

Lately I’ve been getting ideas for the book after the book after the next book (!), which is really distracting.  I should just be getting on with the one I’m working on right now, but when you get a good idea, you can’t let it pass by – you just have to jot it down somewhere, anywhere!  Especially if, like me, you can’t remember something from one minute to the next without putting it in writing.  But it’s very annoying.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying my WIP and haven’t yet hit that “oh-my-god-this-is-such-a-pile-of-cr*p” stage, but those tantalising ideas of future WIP’s won’t leave me alone and every now and then I have to break off what I’m doing, open a new document and write what’s clamouring to come out.

It sounds insane, doesn’t it?  I should be able to control my thoughts, tell them to form an orderly queue and stop jumping it.  I am half English after all, and aren’t the English supposed to be good at queuing?  But maybe my Swedish genes take over in this case, because those ideas just aren’t listening.  Or I have no willpower.  Or something.

Actually, I shouldn’t be complaining, because surely the worst thing for an author would be if you had NO ideas.  None at all.  If your brain was drier than a desert with nothing but tumbleweed blowing through.  That would be nothing short of a disaster.  And that’s why I tend to humour my ideas when they get impatient and won’t wait their turn.  They’re my insurance against the dry season.

Maybe I should give up visiting interesting places?  Because places very often inspire me, especially old ones with an atmosphere of times gone by.  Take for instance Caerleon, in south Wales.  Now, I’ve never wanted to write a book featuring Romans.  I like learning about them and think they were awesome, but I let other people do the writing.  But when I visited what used to be the Roman town of Isca, the atmosphere got to me and those “what if” questions began to crowd my mind ...

I’m supposed to be writing about Japan right now and into my mind pops a Roman centurion.  Very distracting indeed!  I think I’d better go and deal with him ...