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POINT OF VIEW: Waiting for the Light

Lightbulb Idea Rainbow - Deposit Photos

Anyone who regularly reads my newsletter knows I’ve been working on my Dragon Eater trilogy for five hundred years a very long time.

I’d originally intended to query agents for the first book while I worked on the second, but my editor pointed out that I already essentially had the first two parts of the story in the first one, and so I should just split them in two and start on the final part.

So I did, and sent the first book out to query. Then I started on the third one, and have been working slowly through it since spring.

But now, as summer draws to a close and the cooler days of fall approach, the story is finally moving apace. I can see the beginning of the end.

So what happened? The light came on.

I can only speak for myself, but for me, writing is more of an art than a science. Ideas congregate in my writer brain, and then glom together into a rough, messy approximation of a story.

But then every now and then, the lightbulb comes on, everything makes sense, and the path forward is suddenly clear.

I’m having one of those lightbulb moments this week. Things are all coming together for the story, and I can see the path to the end. It’s a glorious feeling, and a little scary too.

It’s as if someone gave you the blueprints to your dream house, and even though it finally seems possible, you’re not sure if you have the requisite skills to build it. Or if it will look anything like what you intended when you started it.

To top things off, my ideas for the trilogy have shifted over the course of the three books, so there are a few rooms of this dreamhouse that I’ve gotta go back and straighten out when it’s all done.

But I’m not going to let that stop me. The end is in sight, and it feels good.

For my short story “Translation,” I had a character who wrote an entire novel in a single night. He was in the zone, and his light was burning bright.

So is mine, for the moment. Excuse me while I go follow it down the road and see where it leads me!

To my writer friends, what’s it like for you when your writing light comes on?

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