Ideas, and where to find them.

I’ve been travelling.

I took some time off to realign my life. Before this trip my day job got very hectic, taking over both my time and my thoughts, and forcing my current writing project to feel abandoned. Yet, in a way, this has turned out to be a good thing.

The work in progress, titled The Midnight Man, is about Stanley, a middle aged guy in an unhappy relationship who finally meets the man of his dreams. The only problem is this man is literally in his dreams. He doesn’t exist in the real world.

It’s still an undernourished first draft.

It’s not even that. This draft is not completed. I’ve already had to print it out twice and re-read it, as there were several gaps of time between working on it. In short, I rediscovered my own novel. Met the characters again. Reconnected to what it was about.

But while I was away, finding time to just be me, the story became much clearer. As a rule, I generally plot my novels and before leaving home I rearranged several scenes to heighten the drama. Away from home, more interesting plot twists came to mind.

I found a dream-catcher in a gift store in San Diego.

It’s not like I’d never seen one before, but it struck me odd that I didn’t come up with the idea to use one in my story. It makes perfect sense that Stanley would try any means to bring his lover into the real world.

I continued to note various life philosophies as I travelled. These thoughts began to link with the themes in the book, but more importantly I decided to make the dream sequences more vivid. I think that’s an offshoot of travel. Life becomes more vivid. Travel allows you to dream and let’s face it, those dreams aren’t dreary.

So now to work.

Once more I have to print out the manuscript and rediscover it, making notes to add more depth to Stanley’s night time rendezvous with his lover. And to work in my travel-fuelled musings on life.