A NEW IDEA

It's there, tantalisingly close. So close that I can almost taste it on my lips, reach out and run my fingers down its spine, hold it close and feel its heart beat. Almost...but not quite.

My next book is coming. I can feel it. A kernel of a seed of a half-formed idea is burrowing its way into my subconscious. I know that it's there. It's sending out little pulses of electricity that make my stomach flip over. I keep getting tiny rushes of adrenaline. They have nowhere to go and they die almost as soon as they are born but they are there nonetheless. It's unsettling. I feel as if I am on a cliff edge and yet I'm not entirely sure which way the danger lies.

But it's so new that I can't catch hold of it. It's like a wisp of smoke, curling around me. I can see it. I can smell it but when I put a hand out to catch it, it disappears into the air and is gone leaving nothing but the unnerving feeling that I have missed something important. It has no form other than the barest outline. It is the ghost of an plot.

I love this bit. I have an idea. I toss it around in my head. I have no clue as to whether it will work, how it will look, if it can possibly be sustained for 85, 000 words. It may have no legs, an idea for a short story and nothing more. It has no characters to populate it, no form or structure at all. And yet my mind keeps coming back to it, worrying it, chasing it. It's a bit like when you did something that wasn't quite right. You can't help thinking about it, going over it in your head, justifying it to yourself. I pick away at the edges like a scab that you've promised yourself you won't touch but can't resist. I must be patient.

It needs time. I must try to ignore it and let it do its own thing. It will either grow a little into something that I can pick up gingerly and enclose in my palm until it is strong enough to breath on its own or it will die and be forgotten along with all the other embryonic ideas that never quite make it.

I shall start to write in June. Whether it will be this story remains to be seen..... Oh but it's exciting waiting to find out.