I was emailing with a friend recently and she commented on spending a lot of time daydreaming stories because it was easier than writing them. :-) That made me smile because it is so true. I've always had stories in my head. I've always tuned out the world and daydreamed them when I was bored. I only write a small fraction of those books.
When I first was published, I used to daydream the stories I was writing at the time. I swear that Ravyn and Damon from Ravyn's Flight were in my head 24/7 for 18 months straight. No exaggeration--I even dreamed their story when I was asleep. But as time has progressed, I've stopped daydreaming the books I'm working on. Why? Because instead of relaxing me, it keys me up now.
For example, I always daydream my stories to send myself to sleep. If I use a story I'm writing, I sit there and mess with the words, trying to get them perfect. Then I start trying to commit them to memory so that I can write them the next day. Then I realize that I'll never remember--I either have to get up and write it down or accept it'll be gone forever.
This is stressful and my mind starts spinning and the next thing I know it's 2am and I'm still lying in bed, not sleeping.
So now when I go to bed, I run stories in my head that I know I'll never write. They're stories where there isn't enough plot for a book. Or maybe the plot is laughable. (I have this stranded-on-a-deserted-island kind of romance story I was playing through last week.) Or this is where I run through the what happens after the book ends scenes. (This week I've been getting a lot of scenes that happen after the end of Kel's book, In the Darkest night.)
I enjoy all of these things for different reasons, but I think my favorite is seeing what my characters are up to after their book is over. I don't know how much longer I'll be able to daydream this, though. I'm beginning to kick myself for not writing down the scenes. You see, I've forgotten some of the ones for my earlier books and I regret not having that information now. And once this gets my brain spinning so that I can't sleep, I'll have to jettison it.
How cool would it be if there was some way to pick up the scenes in my head and transfer them right to a file? If I could just let my brain run without worrying about writing what I'm seeing/hearing down, I could just enjoy myself and I could go back to daydreaming stories I'm actually writing.
