Those of you who follow my fiction writing (there must be three or four of you <wry grin>) have probably figured out that in most cases, I think of an idea first, and what characters I write are mostly in service to that idea. There have been a few times when the idea did not come first, but most of those stories are as yet unpublished (or uncompleted).

Thus, I was rather surprised yesterday, while driving to Boston and New Hampshire (double-convention weekend: the Fantastic Books books are at Boskone in Boston; I’m at the New Hampshire Mensa RG in Portsmouth), that a description of a character, and then moments later the character himself, full-blown, popped into my mind. I looked at him for a few miles, and suddenly his antagonist appeared, almost as fully formed.

So now, while I’m busily RG-ing (I’m giving a talk, doing a Mensa business meeting, and serving as the charity auctioneer), I’ve got these two characters running around my brain, trying to figure out what their story is, and why they’re here. It’s not a condition I’m used to. Maybe, if I’m lucky, they’ll be quiet until the drive home. (Or maybe, if I’m even luckier, they’ll find that story and let me know what it is.)

#amwriting