This one is for those of you who write as well as read.
I don’t know about you but I get random book ideas all the time, especially when I sleep. My dreams are full of great ideas. But like most people I have a hard time remembering my dreams. Thus began my idea journal.
I carry my journal with me often. It sits on my coffee table during the day and sits on my bedside table at night so I can grab it when an idea comes to me. If I don’t have it with me the idea will go into my phone’s notes and be transferred to my journal when I’m home again.
I won this journal in a giveaway from Robin LaFevers when Mortal Heart was released. It is unlined and full of random dreams, thoughts, and other things I might need for writing.
My journal is not organized. Whenever I have a new thought or a dream for a new book, it goes in the book right after the last one. In between those pages are lists of character names, names for places in my fantasy worlds, random tropes in YA that I want to explore, quick sketches of a character or two, a random scene that pops into my head, and a bunch of things that made sense when I wrote them but I have no idea what they mean now.
That’s one of the curses of a lot of these being dreams, when I wake up from one I immediately write it down before falling asleep again. Sometimes sleepy Erin isn’t very clear. Sometimes something that seemed good at the times turns out to be really silly.
For example, here are a few excerpts of the things in my journal that don’t make sense or came from a dream that now seems kinda goofy:
- Bastard sword.- Seriously, I don’t know what I was going for there. Is the sword a bastard? Does it only work for bastards? I dunno.
- Prisoners shapeshift into fish to escape from an Umbridge-like warden.- I actually remember this dream. Kinda. My friends and I were prisoners in a maximum security prison and we learned how to shapeshift into fish, flushing ourselves down the toilet to escape the evil warden. Don’t ask. lol.
- Dragon cats.- Ok I kind of remember this one too. My cats were able to shift back and forth from a cat form to a dragon form and I was one of their riders. My brain, you guys,
There are a lot of really good ones as well. Two I’ve already started work on, and another one I REALLY want to work on soon. All three are fantasies, two came from dreams. I’ve very protective of all 3 of these ideas.
So, writers, how do you organize your book ideas? Where do they come from? Share your own thoughts in the comments.
From my shelf to yours,
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