Future perfect

Since I started writing seriously, I’ve kept a set of notebooks for ideas. Each one represents a future book, one that has a fairly complete idea, with plot and the beginnings of character profiles. So far, I’ve started 17 of these Moleskines. That’s 17 future books.

I start one whenever I have an idea that goes beyond an initial thought. It usually starts with a setting I want to explore, or a plot twist, a mystery trope I want to try (the locked room, for example, or the dual narrator). Then once I have the original idea, a notebook labelled just for that book, I have a place to put other details as they occur to me. Some of the 17 ideas are more fleshed out than others. Some are half a page so far, some I’ve filled more than ten pages with detail. I’m excited about writing all of them.

It’s easy to be excited about the possibilities at this stage. It’s nothing but brilliant ideas and anticipation. None of these books have advanced into the seemingly endless slog, weighed down by disappointment and unmet expectations that comes with doing the actual writing.

But I tell myself that at least I’ve written my way past that anticipatory stage with one book, and the beginnings of another. Many, many writers don’t make it past the ideas, the enticement of the notebooks, and I understand why. It’s hard, and it breaks down your ego, and you never, ever feel like it’s going the way you want it to.

But I’ve come to see the notebooks as a necessary respite in the slog, a way to get excited again about the possibility that writing provides. It’s all new and yet to come in those books, all brilliant, all ready to unspool on the page. It’s the future and so far it looks great.