Writers Runway

My poor brain is on overload. I’ve got couples lined up like planes on a runway waiting for their romances to be told. Each pair are revving their engines, eager to take off on their romantic journeys. Like the hero who comes to town to confront the woman who drove his brother to suicide, only to find she’s not what he expected. And the reclusive hero who had hidden himself in his workshop but finds it hard to stay there when the determined heroine starts prodding him. then there’s the eligible bachelor who had no intension of settling down until a lovely widow and her two little girls invade his life.

And they are all talking at once, begging to be the next story I tell.

There was a time when new ideas were few and far between for me. But the more I write the more the ideas come, and so fast I can’t keep up with them. In fact I have a file full of potential ideas. Some of them are nothing more than a one sentence thought: woman who hates secrets and a man who has too many. Some of them are situations taken from news stories: Man buys small town. Others are ‘what if’ thoughts that have wandered through my mind: What if the hero is a minister who left the pulpit? What if a heroine’s past finally catches up with her? What if someone finds out she’s not who she thought she was?

So how do I choose who will be next? Usually it’s the one that I can plot out the quickest. The story where I know the beginning, the middle, and the end. Many ideas never develop beyond that first sentence. Others come together easily. Each book is different.

I get excited about all my ideas. One of the first things I do is give the hero and heroine their names and once I do that, they are real and they get in line on the runway. I just wish I could write faster. I’d hate to leave Grant and Avery, Jeanie and Zach, Suzanna and Josh sitting on that runway forever.