Hit and Run to the Altar came about because I was thinking about how saying someone got "run over" by a car was largely inaccurate, because really you get run under, the car hits you and you roll over the top of it. That turned into me wanting to write a story about someone who gets hit by a car, and then I thought that it would make for a wonderfully quirky love story.
Once I have an idea I write something, anything down, just so I have the idea on paper. For Hit and Run to the Altar it was:
In his last moment of consciousness while being lifted into the ambulance he saw a woman standing over him. She looked horrified and distraught, genuinely concerned for his well being even though he was fairly certain he had never met her before.
As his eyes started to close his mouth let out the words, "You're pretty."
So far the only note I have for my upcoming novel for National Novel Writing Month is:
"My name is Genevieve Hope. I don't go by Genevieve because people always shorten it to Gen or Genny. I go by Hope because you can't shorten it without being rude."
I'll take these seemingly random things and build a story around them. I've never been able to do a linear story creation, it all comes together in bits and pieces. Like today I overheard someone use the words, "carte blanche" which got me thinking, and now I've got an idea for a story where a woman one day decides that she's going to have carte blanche over her marriage whether her husband likes it or not.
Walking With Your Eyes Closed is actually two stories put together. The whole dinner party thing was a separate story that I snuck in to give the rest of the story some length and depth.
I've got 15 stories in various stages of completion, I just need lots and lots of time to sit in front of the computer and get them typed up. As of right now virtually everything is written out longhand which is how I get all of my first drafts done. If I type up a first draft it ends up horrible because I type way too fast (100+ wpm) and I don't have time to think about what I'm typing.
So I need to get a dozen or so stories typed up, and I have 2 or three stories that need to get written up and in some finished form. All before November when National Novel Writing Month will be taking up the majority of my attention. I already have the idea for my novel and a single line of speech from one of the characters. That's a good start, right?
The best thing is this is the most writing I've ever gotten done in such a short period of time. I'm writing pretty much constantly now and it's got me feeling very fulfilled. The one promise that I made myself was that if I could ever get myself to write with any sort of consistency everything else in my life would fall into place and it's kind of eerie how things are working out across the board. Eerie in a really, really good way.