The Shielding of Mortimer Townes Book Trailer

Hatching the plot

Tapitty tap tap… my fingers try to distract my mind. I’m waiting again. It seems I’m always waiting. In the military one of the first things you learn is “Hurry up and wait.” That’s a tough lesson at seventeen, but it seems that it doesn’t get any easier with age. It’s all about gestation. Mothers, gardeners and writers know what I’m taking about. The seed is planted, the rough draft is done, but now it has to sit awhile.

For writers it’s especially frustrating because this is also the point at which we are most excited about the story. We want everyone to read it so they can experience that clever plot twist seen through the eyes of that well developed character…but we can’t. There’s no ultrasound picture or neatly sown rows to impress the neighbours with. Writers have to keep a lid on it, not a word.

There are important reasons for the secrecy. You see the first thing anyone (who is truly a friend) will say to a writer who tells them of their newborn book is, “Ooh, I want to read it!” Which is where the writer’s ego breaks the glass and mashes the ‘bypass the brain and go straight to the mouth’ button causing them to say, “Sure! I’ll send the rough draft to your email.” Face meet palm.

Once it’s out of the bag it can never be put back in. It’s guaranteed that if you let it sit awhile, when you return to it, you will find a thousand things to change in your story. Not only that, but every one of those changes will improve it. If you let someone read it, you will assuredly wallow in regret. There are even websites that encourage writers to let other writers read their rough manuscripts. Yikes! Feedback hell. So, how long is this ‘writer’s gestation period’? Well, everyone is different but I’d venture to slap a minimum one month time stamp on it, but don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it seems.

There are a couple of proven methods to cheating the waiting blues. One is to start a new project. Another is to keep notes of any new ideas you have for the gestating manuscript. My preferred method is to take a month long holiday around the Mediterranean on a super yacht and forget all about it, but I haven’t managed to pull that one off yet, so I use both methods.

I keep notes on a separate Word doc then open it up when the gestation period is over. In the meantime I break open my ideas folder and dive into another story. Of course that inevitably turns into another rough draft that needs gestation. And so it goes. But after a couple of rough drafts are in the incubator the first one is ready to come out.

Voila! Now where’s that super yacht?