Drinving Without a Map

I am often asked where I get my ideas when I am writing and my answer is always vague, not because I don’t want to share my secrets, but because I don’t have a definitive answer. Often when I am driving down the highway, thinking of anything but writing, I realize that I am looking at the perfect setting for a scene that has been brewing in my mind. I might be standing behind a woman in the check-out line at the grocers and between the shoes she is wearing and the magazine she is thumbing through, I know she will be a character in my book. Very often when I am writing towards a point in my planned plot a new idea drops into my mind and I change direction without ever looking back, because I know when it “drops” in like that, I am receiving a bit of assistance that I shouldn’t ignore. When I wrote String the Dark Pearl, the plot and characters were laid out before me, waiting to be typed onto the page. I knew the characters before I thought of them, and I knew what they would say before I even opened their mouths. I always wrote until I had no more to add, knowing that the next day I would wake up with the next pages waiting to be created. I can’t explain it, except to say that God had a path for my book, it never was mine. If you don’t like the book, tell Him