The next big idea...

Up until this week, summer here in Alaska has been fantastic. Our weather's been better than average - 3-to-1 for rain/sun, when it's usually 5-to-1. My kids kept busy and although hubby dearest (HD) has been gone for almost two months, we were cruising along pretty well.

Then I finished Saving Andromeda. For the past six weeks, I'd lived, breathed, and dreamed this story. When other writers described this experience, in my heart-of-hearts, I was a bit skeptical. Seriously? I thought.  Lived, breathed AND dreamed? Uh huh. Sounds to me you're trying to make other writers feel insecure/jealous/not-like-real-writers.

Then, like a stroke of literary lightning, I got zapped. Every day for hours I could fall, entranced in this world hardly able to stop typing. I wrote chapters surrounded by five year-olds playing Thomas the Train, took the laptop into the kitchen to type while making sure the Rice-A-Roni wouldn't boil over. At night I couldn't sleep for plotting. (The daylight helped, too.) During conversations with real people, I'd drift away thinking about my imaginary people. I was a ditzy as a teenager in love for the first time.

Now, alas, it's over. The MS is in the vault and I'm twiddling my thumbs wondering what happened to the magic.  Because when I re-read my precious darling after a month away, the honeymoon will be over. I'll see all its warts and back hair, wonder why certain scenes smell like my son's dirty socks and roll my eyes at misplaced sentimentality. Or dive into despair because there's NO passion at all even during the kissing scenes. My relationship with this MS is a beautiful illusion - of course I know this, I knew it even in the middle of my fall - but oh, I hate when the magic fades.

I'm forcing myself to finish The Weight of Angels, the MS I abandoned chasing after SA. It's a good story but I'm thinking that it'll always be my rebound relationship. Meanwhile, I wait  for the Next Big Idea to strike....
Anytime now.