My bed isn't on fire, but I am -- on fire with ideas for my gargoyle young adult series. Amusingly enough, it no longer features gargoyles, but 'gargoyle' is the code name in my mind. While I worked on the romance novel tonight after work, I spent the drive back to the evil city thinking about the gargoyle book -- and as soon as I walked in the door here, I went straight for my gargoyle notebook and wrote the first two pages. I have no idea where it will go, but I feel very in tune with the character, I know exactly the voice that I want to write in, and I have some cool ideas for what will happen over the course of the series even if there are still many, many open questions to answer before I can really get on with it.
Of course, Malcolm and Amelia's story, and Ferguson and Madeleine's story, and finding an agent, and getting my romance novel published all come first. But I may work on the gargoyle thing on the side; it could take me years to figure out all of the pieces to this, since I'm envisioning a five-book series, and so it would be helpful to brainstorm and research for it when I'm taking breaks from the romance side of things.
While I do love words (as evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of words I've written on this blog -- 1325 lifetime posts, at an average of 330 words/post, is 437,250 words, not counting the India blog, which is enough for five full-length books), I think I want to be a writer for the sheer thrill of discovering what happens to my characters. I had a moment of realization about a character in the gargoyle series on the way home tonight, and I was flooded with a rush of heat so intense that I would imagine most people have to invest in heavy drugs to get there. It's like everything was totally clear for a perfect moment, and if I could stay in that moment, the entire story would unfold on a platter before me. The moment disappeared, of course, but I would do anything to get it back, including pounding my head against the desk on all the other days when the universe stays stubbornly closed against me and nothing makes sense.
So that was the writing. The rest of the day was fine too, albeit annoying, since I had to pay for the stupid rental car. I grabbed coffee at the new Phil'z location that replaced Creme de Cafe in Palo Alto Midtown -- Creme de Cafe is the coffee place I used to hang out at while doing laundry at the laundromat next door when I lived in Palo Alto next year, and Phil'z is the ultimate overpriced coffee place that started in SF and is now expanding in the Bay Area. The coffee was good and they've substantially upscaled the decor (or at least cleaned it, which is still a step up) -- but $3.25 is pretty expensive for a sixteen-ounce cup of coffee, even if it is freshly ground and brewed by the cup, and even if they do add the cream and sugar for you. I'll probably go back, of course, if only because their Tesora blend fueled some amazing gargoyle brainstorming action, but it's not going to be my go-to place on the Peninsula.
Okay, I should go to bed; I must work tomorrow, which means I need to sleep if I'm going to rouse myself from dreams of gargoyles (or rather, non-gargoyles) in time for my nine a.m. meeting. Goodnight!
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