Well, this is interesting (I think?)

[desperance]

Famously, I don't make notes of ideas as I have them. Neither do I, from choice, write synopses; I like not to know where a book is going, to discover the journey hand in hand with the reader, as it were. (This is for values of 'like' that include total panic at frequent intervals, obviously; I just think that for me, it makes better books. If I plan a story out, then I follow the plan like a route-march, which all feels a little mechanical; if I let it happen day by day, then there's a whole lot more that gets a chance to feed into the story, including all the character development as we go. Plot is what people do, and if people change en route then the plot can change with them, unhindered. Someone once said that being asked to write a synopsis for a book they hadn't written yet was like being asked to draw a map of a country they hadn't visited; I like that...)

Anyway. A while back, a year or more, I was writing a sort-of horror book for kids, at the same time as I was writing an SF novella for grown-ups, turn and turn about; but then rewrites for something else came in, and I had to put at least one of those projects down, so it was the kids' book that was set aside. I had just reached a good stopping-point, five chapters in; also I had just had the sudden revelation that made sense of the plot-thus-far, I knew at last just where it was heading.

So I wrote the novella, and then I worked on the rewrites, and and and; and I never got back to the kids' book till now. Where of course I realise that I have entirely forgotten that sudden revelation, and I now have no idea where the book was headed.

I worked through the extant 20K words, revising and cutting, to see if that would help; it did not. I didn't make notes, because I don't, and whatever that inspiration was, it is lost.

So this evening I went for a stroll to think things through, and came back with a totally other idea that works absolutely. Whether it works as well as the original, we will never know; but for certain sure this is not it, and for certain sure this works extremely well. Which I think is the first time I've ever had a significant chunk of book branch off in two contrary directions (it's one of those nodes in the multiverse, is what it is: somewhere out there is another world, where I did remember the original version...).

I think this is cool, and it totally justifies my shruggish attitude, "if I forget something lovely, hell, I'll just think of something else..." There is always another idea out there, waiting.

Comments

[ogre-san.livejournal.com]

There was a podcast interview with Gene Wolfe where he--perhaps tongue-in-cheek--attributed some of his reputation to the fact that he was often interrupted in the writing of a story, could never remember where it was going when he came back to it, and so had to come up with an entirely new direction the story could go in. Then, naturally, reviewers praised his ability to shift gears and go off in those new directions. This could work great.

And I'm not much for notes, myself.

[miladyinsanity.livejournal.com]

I know nothing, but I've written down those revelations before, and then come back to it and had ANOTHER revelation which meant that I had to choose and usually I go with the new one because it's fresher and seems better.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

That is, indeed, very cool.
I write plot inspirations down on the nearest scrap of paper to hand (often the backs of box lids). hen I put them on my desk.
Months later they reappear and I wonder, vaguely, what on earth I meant by them.

[jeremy-m.livejournal.com]

How do you know the new idea isn't the same as the old forgotten one? I'm sure some of my best new ideas are ones I've had before, or that I've forgotten hearing from someone else first.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Because it's a response to stuff I've been reading/thinking about these last days, which is All New; and because I had to build it brick by brick in my head on my walk, rather than digging it up whole and entire; and no, I can offer no evidence at all, internal or external, except my honest belief that it is indeed not what I had forgotten.