Sparking a Book Idea: Part I

I have published sixty books for young readers. This pandemic year I wrote two more - both verse novels, a form I am now enraptured with. Those who have read these two newest manuscripts think they are the best books I have ever written, and I think so, too.

But each time I sit down to start a new book I find myself paralyzed by possibility. How does one select an idea out of all the ideas floating around IN THE UNIVERSE? I also find EVERY SINGLE TIME that I've completely forgotten how I wrote the previous dozens of books. After settling on an idea, how does anybody WRITE a book? How does one DO it?

So here is how I wrote the last one, so that I can read over this post when I get ready to start the next one. Maybe this record of my gropings will be helpful for you, too.

First I look for a spark  - some little tingling something that tantalizes me as a possible spark for a story. Many authors keep notebooks of ideas. I have done this only fitfully, but I wish I had done it steadily. When I was searching for an idea for this latest book, I dragged out an old idea notebook. 

The ideas are mainly itty-bitty snippets that don't even deserve to be called ideas - some just popped into my head unbidden, but most came from somewhere: a newspaper clipping, an overheard conversation, a child I'd encountered, a memorable name, a fragment of experience. Here are a few that I bothered to write down: 

a girl named Sonnet

being rejected for something you didn't even apply for

persimmon pudding

a cookie-cutter collectors convention

newspaper clipping: "Russia regenerates 30,000-year-old flower"

the Museum of Losers on Route 36 in Kansas

Egg Farm Road

little girl giving a tour of the Old Jail Inn

Leap Year Day - an extra day as a gift from the universe

The best idea-spark is quirky but compelling, something a bit offbeat, but that makes me want to get out my clipboard, pad of paper, and trusty Pilot pen and start scribbling some questions. For this most recent book, the idea that most tantalized me was the Museum of Losers that I discovered on one of my long trips back and forth from Colorado to Indiana when I was teaching there for several years. It turned out to be just a wall in a bank on the dusty main street, covered with write-ups of each losing presidential candidate. 

Could I write a book where the kid - it would be a girl - I sensed that it would be a girl - would live in a small Kansas town with a museum like that?

I started scribbling notes....

I asked myself: did her parents create this museum? was it her mother? or her father? had they lost something in the past that would motivate them to do this? what would that be? how would my protagonist find this out? or was she the one who created the museum? if so, what would draw her to this project? what might she lose in the course of the story.... and then perhaps find again.....?

And I started scribbling answers...

TO BE CONTINUED!