I got asked this weekend where the idea for Project Lighthouse came from. (Note: Project Lighthouse is my fantasy novel currently in the process of heavy editing for self-publication. It’s the theme of many of my “Writing Updates” here). That question in itself would not be a topic for an essay, I think. “Where’d the idea come from?” There’s not enough there, not enough of myself and my story and methods to share with you there. The short of it is: The trunk novel I wrote before Project Lighthouse was very dark and very long. I wanted a short stint in a cozy fantasy world and leapt into Lighthouse from there. It was only after I finished it that I decided it was better than a trunk novel and deserved some serious work put into it (18 more months of work so far and still going strong!) But yesterday an idea came to me in passing which will become a future novel of mine.
This didn’t happen because of the question from my friend, but it feels like kismet that it did. I want to write the idea and the process and track this, so that I may reread in the future what the process looked like for this ethereal future novel in mid-august 2024, months or years before I start it.
But I have started it. That’s the trick of it all, I think. I started this novel years and years ago when I first began homebrewing a world in the table top RPG that my friends and I played in college (you know the one). That’s the root of the world of Breiar, where Project Lighthouse and Project Carving and this glimmer of an idea for a novel take place. To make it concrete, though, the idea for this novel started yesterday. I slept on it last night after mulling over some ideas and story beats and characters throughout the day yesterday. Work was very distracting from this. Even as I read in bed, before falling asleep, bits and thoughts of this new story flashed through my mind, distracting me, but in a good way.
The idea came from a reminder about The Magician’s Nephew, but C.S. Lewis. I was reading an essay comparing it and the work Piranesi and the worlds within worlds of both (essay here: https://substack.com/home/post/p-147095823?source=queue The Actual Point of Literature by Clifford Stumme). I didn’t finish the essay – sorry Clifford – but was reminded so strongly of an idea I stole from Lewis for our tabletop game almost a decade ago. Magic rings transported my players back in time, to a Breiar ages before the one they had been playing in for months. That’s the piece I stole from Lewis: the rings, but how I stole it, and where they came from in my story, were original. Reading about the Magician’s Nephew made me remember bits of my story. I remembered a god, traveling in the guise of an old man with six yellow birds fluttering about him.
This was the image that sparked the idea.
I wrote in my notes app: “Osnir and small birds about him meet a traveler in an unknown land.”
Then, seconds after stopping and looking at that sentence: “Imla the Sorcerer?”
That was it. My mind was racing now. Bouncing through settings and set pieces and trying to ask why a god would meet a sorcerer and wondering if this was what gave the man his magic. Was it the god? Or was there something Imla must do before he meets the god?
I cheat again here. I know Imla the Sorcerer. His name in my first fantasy novel - written in 2021 and promptly shoved as deep into my desk drawers as possible - is Imla of the Shrinking Desert. I’ve seen a version of his adventures. I know what happened to him back then, just as I know so much about Osnir and places in the world of Breiar where the pair may cross paths. Because this world isn’t new to me. I’ve been writing in it for years. I hope to share it with all of you so soon, but though you have seen little of it outside The Flute Thief (https://mcosmosnewstrom.substack.com/p/the-flute-thief) there is a lot of writing I’ve done in this place. That’s the truth of where ideas come from. They don’t just appear; they build up over time and as I toss ideas or stories out, it’s not into the wastebasket, but onto the pile of mental papers I have building up in the corner of my mind, ready to be rifled through like a detective searching for that one clue. The novel Imla was in will never be published. It just has too much work to do on it and I don’t think I have it in me to sit with one story for that long fixing it up. But that doesn’t mean the character isn’t dead or gone. He may still appear, in fact, it’s almost certain he does.
Now for the easy and the hard part of a new idea: letting it sit.
I try not to write down too many notes on novels I wish to work on. Something of the magic is lost when I write an idea in a notebook. It lives there at that point, and my brain is free to think of other things. Word association for short story titles and ideas, or essay thoughts, is great to clear up this way. I write the idea and flash of thought and then I cease to think of it until I sit down to work on an essay like this. I crack open my notebook and remember “Oh yea, that was the title for my essay on The Fisherman. Let’s follow that thread of thought now.” And I do. I give myself a jumping off point and can follow it through to the end.
That doesn’t work with novels for me. They’re too big. They need so many ideas and so many things to come together coherently that is not only interesting for you to read, but interesting for me to write. I’ve gotta have fun here, too.
So I leave it up to my brain and my decent memory. These yellow birds and a god and a sorcerer of The Shrinking Desert will bounce around in my mind for weeks or months. The ideas that stick with me until I begin outlining will be the best of them. The things I forget mustn’t be excellent ideas, anyway. I think I know the novel I’ll be working on after Project Carving is off to the editor and Project Lighthouse is hopefully on its way to your hands. It isn’t this tale of fantasy and gods and magic and yellow birds. No, this one has to sit awhile in my mind. My next novel will be a departure from my comfort zone of fantasy and sci fi. I’m not quite ready to share specifics there, but as I get deeper into the work there, I’ll update you all here.
That’s the start of it, though. The first idea for a novel, hit and caught in the moment and expressed here for posterity. I worry a bit about even writing it here, affecting the bouncing around of the idea in my mind, but not too much. Good ideas never really go away. It’s the bad ones that fade, or worse, get caught in notebooks and kept to be written and enjoyed less than the good ones later.
I’ll keep bouncing around the idea, enjoying memories of a world I’ve spent quite some time in and mulling over unknown places I wish to explore, and continue working on other writing. My guess is partway through the next novel (no fancy codename there yet) I’ll start the true outlines for this fantasy tale. That’s when the “writing” begins, but in a way, it started both yesterday and years before. Writing never stops and ideas never disappear. Keep at it and they’ll keep coming.
I hope you stick around and see what they turn into.
Side note: I tried something fun and painted a picture from this yet unwritten novel (that’s the one at the start of this piece). So credit the for the image goes to me!
Its a setpiece in my mind, far away from the golden birds and the sorcery and the gods. I enjoy spending time in this world and creating art. If there’s one takeaway from this essay for ya, it’s go have fun creating your own worlds and stories, whatever way you want!
Thanks for giving this a read! Let me know where your ideas come from in the comments below and give this a share if you want to help spread the word of my publication!
Love ya!
Max