One of the best pieces of writing advice I ever received was that process changes and that I shouldn't fight those changes, but go with them. And my process did change. The difference between how I wrote book 1 and book 4 are like night and day. This latest process change, though, has me scratching my head.
I have the hero and heroine from book 1 and their story pretty well set. Then the characters from book 4 shared their info. I have a bare bones kind of structure for their story.
Ideas can come from anywhere, but book 3 came to me from a license plate. Not a personalized one either. Although maybe came to me might be too strong. I had a heroine show up and kind of give me a vague impression of who she is and what she's doing. Her hero hasn't been that helpful and he's still an unknown shadow.
The second book, well, I have a kind of thought about that, but there are problems with the setup and I don't know if they can be overcome. I'll keep mulling.
I've never had a license plate trigger a story idea before and I've never gotten ideas for books within a series backward either. I might have nothing more than a rough idea of the hero and heroine, but they've always come in order. I'm trying to go with the flow here, but I'm finding this new process to be very frustrating.
It's like my muse has gone retrograde and I'm not enjoying it. I like things to come in order. I don't want to try to guess what the middle pieces are and how they'll fit in with the first and last stories.
And I have no choice because this is how the stories/series is coming to me. Seriously, muse? Seriously?
