While walking the dog this morning, my head was busy with thoughts of ‘Thoughts‘ — hmm, and I detect a problem with that name — but there, I just added a link to differentiate, woo-hoo — and back to my point, I was thinking about the story I’m working on. Then I got home and a friend suggested something about ‘Ghosts’ (link created just for the fun of it) and now I’ve been trying to write both stories at once and getting nowhere with either. It reminds me of when I was working on two Eureka stories at once. I’d say that both suffered as a result, but that wouldn’t really be true: one suffered greatly as a result, one got most of my attention. In this case, I don’t want either to suffer. I need to figure out where I’m going.
I’m noticing with Thoughts a little bit of the same problem I faced with Ghosts about three chapters in: I thought that I was writing a light, fun, cheerful, entertaining paranormal romance, only then I discovered that it had a remarkable amount of death and tragedy in it. After all, telling a story about a teenage ghost requires that there be a dead teenager somewhere in the background. In this case, I’m writing a romantic thriller, I thought, only I have the same dead teenager problem. Not to mention poor Rachel. Sylvie’s reaction to finding out about Dillon’s death is important, but I can’t let it take the story too dark. I need to find the right balance.
I did have a clever cover thought (I think), which was that I ought to find a picture I like for the cover right now, and then I can be sure that the right picture exists. I spent a lot of time looking at pictures of women on stock photo sites trying to find one that I could use for Akira, for the cover of Ghosts, but alas, in my head, she looks just like Marie Digby. I never did find anything that satisfied me. For Thoughts, on the other hand, I found a great Sylvie almost immediately, but the pictures of her were probably only usable by someone who is really good at Photoshop. (In other words, not me.) Cover design thoughts are really just ways to distract me from thinking about writing, though. And drat, how did it get so late? Time to write…