I find myself at the edge of an idea, an idea that’s slowly beginning to take root and wind itself through my imagination. I have 281 words written down and no more tripping off my fingers, but the idea continues its delicate, unhurried movement across my mind.
Something new… Along the same lines as my other work, with a new setting, characters, plot. I have so little decided that it’s far too early to call it even the barest outline of a book, and yet it’s there—it exists. Whatever it becomes or doesn’t become, the first tentative fragments of it are starting to tumble together, creating an unfocused pattern of possibility.
Clearly it’s too soon to even really talk about, and I honestly don’t know what I’d say. “Well, you see… There’s this person, and she gets involved in something—or it sort of involves her, maybe… And she goes somewhere, I’m not sure where, and something happens, and then there’s this person she meets, and this other person…” That’s pretty much what I’ve got going on in my head, story-wise.
But how exciting, all the same! Every time this happens I’m slightly in awe of the process, watching it unfold in my own mind, trying not to will the unfolding to come about too quickly. Patience is required of me right now—an open mind, ready hands when words finally begin to form, and patience until they do. This is the magical and frustrating part about beginning a new project, no matter how many books I’ve written. The slow, strange catching of kindling from a tiny, unexpected flicker of an idea, while I alternately watch, and lightly fan it with air, and watch again, ready to start piling on fuel when the moment is right.
And so I keep my Word document with my 281 words at the ready, and so I Google various topics and skim through information, and so I let myself begin to believe that the next book could almost, just almost, be ready to write.
– Emily
Emily Senecal Books 