Capturing Inspiration, Waiting for Energy - #WritersNotebook #AmWriting #Series

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If you’re an author, you’ve probably been advised to carry a notebook with you all the time – the way a photographer always carries a camera. The idea is that you can use the notebook whenever inspiration strikes: to jot down story ideas, snippets of conversation, or paragraphs of text that come to mind.

I’ve had a notebook for more than ten years. It lives in a cubby in my headboard. I don’t bring it out on the street at least partly because the contents could be compromising if someone else read them. Also, I don’t want to lose my ideas. Finally, I seem to get much of my inspiration in bed. Wipe those thoughts from your dirty mind! What I mean is that I’m much more likely to come up with ideas after my work day is through, when I’m relaxing and reading as I normally do before going to sleep. I also am prone to erotic dreams; I want to have some place to write them down before the emotions vanish.

When I browse through the notebook, I find plenty of thoughts about stuff I haven’t written (at least not yet). It’s also gratifying, though, to notice how many concepts I actually have fleshed out and published. Sometimes there’s a long lag between the appearance of an idea and its realization. I might have an inspiration, but not be able to devote the necessary time or energy to bring it to fruition.

I’ve decided this shouldn’t bother me. Sometimes, I’m just not ready to follow my ideas.

This weekend, I started work on a series I outlined in my notebook more than six years ago. At that time, I was writing almost exclusively erotic romance, for an indie publisher. I’d realized that my colleagues had better sales when they wrote series rather than standalone titles, and thought I should give it a go. So I roughed out the framework for a set of steampunk books entitled The Toy Makers Guild.

The basic premise: a remote mansion in an alternative Victorian England, where a group of brilliant young engineers (male and female) create customized, automated sex toys for wealthy and influential clients. Of course, anyone who worked in such an environment would need to be both sexually liberal and sexually knowledgeable. A bit of a taste for dominance and submission would also be appropriate, given the British love of corporal punishment.

This notion set the creative juices flowing. At the time, though (I see now), I just wasn’t ready to write a series. Plus I was having a hard time reconciling my notions about the free-wheeling sexual environment in the Guild with the constraints of the erotic romance genre.

Fast forward to 2020. I’ve written two series at this point (Vegas Babes and Asian Adventures). I have a much better understanding of how to link a set of books together. My imagination is less likely to shut down after I write “The End” for a single book. Meanwhile, I’m now self-publishing almost all my work, which means I don’t have to follow anyone’s rules about genre or what is and is not acceptable.

So I’m happy to announce that I’ve written the first two chapters of The Pornographer’s Apprentice, which will be the first book in The Toy Makers Guild series. I have titles and plans for the next two as well – they’re right there in the notebook – though of course my ideas may change as I write.

That’s okay. The purpose of the notebook is to capture ideas, not to constrain them.

Stay tuned!