Marie-Kondo-ing your writing
My house is never tidier than right after finishing a book. It’s like a Marie-Kondo-style hurricane is unleashed, organising, cleaning, decluttering. For one, because it feels amazing after a period of intense mind-work to do something mindless: sorting old sheets, matching up single socks, cleaning out cupboards. Plugged into your favourite audiobook, you hum to yourself as you pass your slowly cooling cup of tea on the kitchen counter and stop for a sip.
But what it really is, is setting the stage. Getting ready. Wiping clean the creative slate. Because, yes: BOOK 4.
Sparks of joy galore
Book 4’s been looming ever so faintly for the past two months, waiting to be allowed to inch forward. At first, it seems impossible. A whole new world to be created (gah!), a new set of characters (say it ain’t so!), another 120,000 words to write when your your mind’s been wrung out like a dish cloth?? Unthinkable!
But somewhere between sweeping the attic floor and hoovering behind the water heater (because that’s the kind of deep-clean that goes down in Nikola’s post-Book-3-world), small ideas start sprouting. Like new shoots on a creeper or the first leaves in spring, they’re bright and almost translucent and make your heart tingle with possibility.
At this stage, they’re mostly an indulgence, creative dust bunnies, if you will. There’s a boarding school in there, and possibly a clique of girls swearing life-and-death oaths to stick together, and there could well be a teacher leading them astray (or saving it all?). There will most definitely be a dark deed lingering across the decades and I want the ocean too, a wild, mysterious place buffeted by the wind. Or maybe it’ll be sisters returning to clear out their childhood home, finding a cookbook that takes them deep into their family’s past? Or four friends who meet every Christmas, bound together by secrets…
Making way for new beginnings
You get the picture. It’s not really the idea shoots that count, it’s the exercise of clearing one’s mind — and house — until there’s room for something new. Most of those first ideas won’t stay or will change shape (maybe the sisters went to the boarding school and are now returning to see their old teacher who led them astray…🤔) but the most important thing is, something’s a-brewing and it’s exciting.
