The Problem with Interesting

Dirt is super frustrating. And that is not a sentence I ever expected to write.

If I think about it, I can come up with times I’ve been sort of annoyed with dirt. It refuses to grow anything I plant and insists on growing stuff no one would ever want in a yard. It gets tracked into places it isn’t welcome and stuck in crevices that are hard to clean. I never thought to blame the dirt for those things. And in all fairness, it might not have been the dirt’s fault when that cabbage wouldn’t grow after I hit it with a lawn mower.

This time, however, I’m certain the dirt is not cooperating. I’m trying to make a cover for the new Wisherton book. The theme is dirt. Not really, but they all have dirt as the background because I decided on dirt as a background for book 1, and now that’s the background for all of them.

The front cover didn’t take long to come together. Then – what should have been the easy part – I only needed to spread some plain dirt on the back to go under the blurb. That’s when the dirt got mad at me or something. All it needed to do was fade into the background and roughly match the dirt on the front. I had no idea dirt could be so colorful. This is partly because I’ve given dirt very little thought (Is that why it’s mad at me?) and partly because I’ve never used the word colorful to describe eight million shades of brown. None of those shades match the front.

As far as fading into the background, when you look closely at a spot of dirt, there’s some ridiculously eye-catching shapes. In this patch of dirt, we have a few grains that are three times the size of the others. In this other patch of dirt, we have a clover. We have one clover that managed to grow all by itself in the middle of dirt I didn’t inspect enough before taking a picture. I didn’t know I needed to inspect it. And since when do rocks photobomb? All my dirt is entirely too interesting for background. That’s why I’m mad at it, too.

This probably won't be the last time.

 Welcome to another episode of conversations with myself.

 

Q. How’s the next project coming?

A. Well… I’m sure I’ll have some direction soon.

Q. Direction?  Are you telling me you haven’t started yet?

A. Of course I’ve started.  I’m always working on something.  It’s just too soon to talk about it.

Q. I don’t know what you mean.  You can talk about your plans so far.

A. What if my plans involve only vague ideas?

Q. That’s still interesting, and it still sounds like you haven’t started yet.

A. Maybe if I didn’t have to answer all these questions, I’d –

Q. No excuses.  It’s time for you to be an open book.  <hee hee>

A. Why is that funny?

Q. Because you’re an author.  You want people to open your books, and I’m asking you to be one.  Figuratively.  That’s… kind of funny.

A. Is it figuratively funny?

Q. That’s not a thing.

A. Are you sure?

Q. So… about that book you haven’t started…

A. The one I’m not talking about?

Q. Yeah.  Why aren’t you talking about it?

A. I don’t have anything interesting to say yet.  I have lots of ideas on what I want to write, and I haven’t decided which ones I’ll use.

Q. I think you just admitted you haven’t started yet.

A. Every book starts with an idea.

Q. But you haven’t started writing the book yet.

A. I’ve written down some ideas.

Q. Why does it feel like we’re talking in circles?
A. Wait.  Who’s we?

Q. Me and… uh, all the people who want to know about your next book.

A. My newest book came out only two weeks ago.  Maybe “we” should remind everyone to read Simon’s Mother before we talk about what comes next.

Q. That’s a good point.  It does seem a little soon to bug you about writing something new.

A. I don’t know why we even had this conversation.

Q. Well, someone might have laughed.  It was funny.  Figuratively.

Gathering the Ingredients

I was asked recently how I organize my thoughts to write a whole book. Honestly, at the start of a project, my thoughts don’t seem very organized so I had to think about this. How do I organize my thoughts? Given that I should probably start working on my next book, it’s a very good time to answer this question.

Let’s pretend I want to write some sort of fluffy romance. I’ll need three main ingredients: a man, a woman, and an obstacle.

Who is the man? And I don’t mean his name. If I tried to start with names, I’d never get anything written.  I mean what qualities are going to make him attractive to the woman? Is she interested in someone who feels responsibility towards younger siblings because their dad died when he was a teenager? Or someone who quietly pulls off epic pranks that no one ever realizes he’s behind? I’ll need to think about who else is in his life. Is someone bugging him to “settle down” or just giving him a hard time about that thing he does that irritates everyone? These minor characters are especially important if I’m writing a series.

Who is the woman? I’ll name her later, too. How is she attractive to the man in my story? Is she self-conscious about the fact that her hair sticks up at a hint of static or that she once went bowling and hit pins three lanes to the right? Who in her life is going to keep her humble with these things? Does she have family nearby? If she’s living with her parents, they might be a bigger part of her story. One of her friends should probably be set up to be the woman in the next book, that way she already has a name.

And now what is the obstacle? The story is over on page two if there is no obstacle to the relationship. Sometimes the problem is simply that they just met. Even the most hopeless of romantics knows love doesn’t happen on sight. But variety is good so sometimes the obstacle is fear. Is this a story where neither wants to be the first to admit feelings? Is it a story where someone was hurt in the past or someone else is insanely stubborn? Is there a miscommunication that absolutely cannot involve the words “Now what were you going to tell me?” Maybe a bad first impression is the obstacle. Thank you, Jane Austen.

What if I want to write something other than light romance? I guess I’d have to organize my thoughts around some other ingredients. I hope one of them isn’t dirt.