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any excuse for a nap
Mar. 13th, 2009 03:24 pmRecently on Facebook I mentioned that I'd finished a novel, the first of three I've planned for this year. It's a four-part romp about a young boy who lives in a street where nothing works. After a mysterious crew of silver-suited plumbers wake him up in the middle of the night, Ollie finds himself falling through holes between worlds--meeting vampires, cyborg pirates, and living castles, among other things--and ultimately saving the multiverse from the plumbers' nefarious plans.
The release date of the first instalment is May 2010--a very long way off . It doesn't even have a title yet (but Omnibus is the publisher). I mention it here mainly to answer those people who've asked about it, and also to talk about how so many of my stories are inspired by things that happen at night.
This particular book wouldn't have existed but for a 4am event in our street almost identical to the one in the book (minus the holes-to-other-worlds angle, of course) plus several hours of hypnagogic musings on the subject. That's just one book. There's also The Stone Mage & the Sea and the various Change series, "A Map of the Mines of Barnath" and the Structure stories, my first novel Metal Fatigue, and Protection, the crime novel I'll be writing next year--all of which came from dreams. That's not to mention the many, many plot points generated while unconscious--solutions that came to me, over the course of waking up, to problems that utterly stumped me the day before.
The subconscious-as-homunculus model of writing is one I'm very much beholden to. The more evidence mounts, the more I'm convinced that my best ideas come while I'm asleep.
That said, I've stopped reaching for my bedside notebook every time I lurch out of unconsciousness, brain a-buzz with what feels like awesome inspiration. Most of the notes I write under those circumstances are gibberish, when they're legible at all. Sleep, I've learned, may provide ideas, but it's also a great filter of crap ones. I figure that if something's worth remembering, I will remember it--or it'll drag me out of bed, properly awake, after an hour of nagging--and if I forget something, it was probably for a reason. On the odd occasion I do worry that I've lost a good idea, I console myself with the knowledge that coming by another one might be as simple as rolling over and getting a few more Zs.
The release date of the first instalment is May 2010--a very long way off . It doesn't even have a title yet (but Omnibus is the publisher). I mention it here mainly to answer those people who've asked about it, and also to talk about how so many of my stories are inspired by things that happen at night.
This particular book wouldn't have existed but for a 4am event in our street almost identical to the one in the book (minus the holes-to-other-worlds angle, of course) plus several hours of hypnagogic musings on the subject. That's just one book. There's also The Stone Mage & the Sea and the various Change series, "A Map of the Mines of Barnath" and the Structure stories, my first novel Metal Fatigue, and Protection, the crime novel I'll be writing next year--all of which came from dreams. That's not to mention the many, many plot points generated while unconscious--solutions that came to me, over the course of waking up, to problems that utterly stumped me the day before.
The subconscious-as-homunculus model of writing is one I'm very much beholden to. The more evidence mounts, the more I'm convinced that my best ideas come while I'm asleep.
That said, I've stopped reaching for my bedside notebook every time I lurch out of unconsciousness, brain a-buzz with what feels like awesome inspiration. Most of the notes I write under those circumstances are gibberish, when they're legible at all. Sleep, I've learned, may provide ideas, but it's also a great filter of crap ones. I figure that if something's worth remembering, I will remember it--or it'll drag me out of bed, properly awake, after an hour of nagging--and if I forget something, it was probably for a reason. On the odd occasion I do worry that I've lost a good idea, I console myself with the knowledge that coming by another one might be as simple as rolling over and getting a few more Zs.
