Over the weekend, I felt a driving urge to read In the Darkest Night, my April 2010 book, and revisit Kel and his heroine. I don't know why since since I've had the Advanced Reading Copies (ARCs) of this book for a couple of weeks now, but I couldn't resist. So Friday night while I was doing laundry, I went through and read all my favorite parts.
And then I had an after-the-book moment come in. I've mentioned this before on the blog, but I almost always get scenes that happen after each of my stories is finished. I wish I'd written these down, but I never have and now I can only remember some of them in a vague way. This makes me sad.
My Light Warrior stories have had a lot of after the book moments pop into my head, probably because there are four of them all set in the same world, but most of it has either been big series overview stuff that probably no one except me would be interested in or X-Rated. Or if not that explicit, at least private and not something I felt like my characters wanted me to write down and share with the world.
But the scene I received this weekend is one I could write--and I still can't post it because Kel's story isn't out yet and it all takes place about eight months after the epilogue of his story.
Honestly, though, I probably wouldn't be writing it down anyway even if I did know I could share it. I'm on deadline right now for a short story and my time and attention needs to be focused that direction. When I turn this story in, I have three ideas for series that I need to work on and one of them has kept me obsessed for more than 2 weeks now. I'm dying to get back to it and figure out how I'm going to tell these stories.
That's the problem for me--time. I have so many stories in my head, so many characters vying for attention, that I had to stop and go back to write a scene with characters that already have their happy ending. And yet in a few years when this scene I got has faded from my memory, I'm going to be really sad that I didn't take the time to write it down. It's a constant struggle, or so it seems, between the future, the present, and the past. It doesn't help either that I'm a slow writer, especially at the start of a book. Or that my last project, the one my agent has now, required cutting and rewriting the first three chapters more times than I have ever had to cut and rewrite before. That's not even counting the minor changes.
It's too bad--in a way--that I can't hook my brain up to the computer and dump these scenes out without needing to take the time to work it all out through my fingers on the keyboard. I'm betting that someday we do, but right now, that doesn't help me.
