I love the flow of ideas that I have. It's actually one of the coolest things about being a writer, although I sure wish I was 1) a faster writer and 2) able to write full time so I had more hours available to get the stories down. The thing is, though, that sometimes ideas aren't ready to be written or too slight to carry a book. That's one of the really cool things about ebooks--because there's no paper involved, short stories can be published now. Unfortunately, some ideas still aren't viable to be written.
As an example, Deke from In the Midnight Hour had his soul imprisoned inside a cartoon character of himself. That idea came easily ten years earlier. I wrote in my notebook: Deke Summers PI is a cartoon character who comes to life. Or something similar to that. Short, cool premise, no story. There was nothing to write at that point.
Then right as I was finishing The Power of Two, Ryne showed up and started talking to me. We started with reams of information about her society, but despite how much detail she was providing, I had no hero for her and no real story because she was just doing her daily job. Nothing was different and stories focus on when change happens for a character. And then I had this flash. Deke! is her hero. I suddenly had a story and when/how everything changed for her.
Some ideas have a bit more than what I had for Deke, but I still know I'll never write them and those become bedtime stories. I can't think about books I'm going to write because it'll keep me awake and start my mind spinning, but I've always told myself stories to fall asleep.
Only recently one of those "bedtime" stories is morphing into a real story. It would be a short length because it really can't support a full book even with the premise beefed up. I'm interested to see how this is going to work. I had no names for the characters, now I have names. I had no real plot driving events because bedtime stories are simply for my personal enjoyment, now I have a plot. I had a world built, but it wasn't very detailed--more like a set for a play. Now I have fully realized world.
It's been interesting to watch a bedtime story change into a story I actually plan to write. I can't wait to see what happens next.
