Books sneak up on you

Whoever first said, "Inspiration sneaks up on you," must have had a great deal of wisdom.

When I wrote my first book, I did not have any intention of writing a second book. It was going to be a one-time event, and I would go back to sports writing and homeschooling once it was finished.

The Jewelry of Grace was not supposed to happen. But it snuck up on me.

Now, I did have some parts of a romantic story in my mind for several years, even before The Pride of Central went to print. But at the time, it was pretty flat. It was a tale about a man and woman who were newlyweds and navigating their way through the first years of marriage. But I could not figure out what else they did. So I never consciously developed the story beyond that.

Maybe it happened while promoting my first book, maybe it happened on car rides to the sports events I was still writing about for the local newspapers, maybe it was when I was trying to sleep at night. Over time, I subconsciously developed the other portions of the story that became The Jewelry of Grace.

The primary new development was the search for five jewels that were supposed to belong to the titular Grace, but somehow a golf subplot worked its way in too. (Hey, I am a sports writer. It comes naturally.)

But, even after the story elements were all there for me, I did not start outlining or planning right away. I thought about the story some more. This was not due to a lack of time. I needed to make sure I truly wanted to write it.

Having written a book already, one might suspect that writing a second is easier. That is true in some ways and false in others (that will be its own blog post later on), but as far as this story was concerned, it was harder for me to be certain I wanted to put this novel out for public reading. My first novel revolved around a baseball team. I can talk to anyone about baseball for hours if they wanted. The Jewelry of Grace revolved around a romance. That's not so easy a subject for me to discuss.

So I took some time to ponder it, not just its plot and themes, but also my comfort level in telling this tale. I eventually decided that while I may not have the easiest time speaking to someone about romance, I express myself better with written words than spoken words anyway.

Challenge accepted.

And I told my new story to stop sneaking up on me, and start being present with me every day. I had some some work to do with it.

I knew it would take time. What I didn't know was that the world would be turned upside down during the time I worked on the manuscript.

Next week: Writing during a pandemic