I have a friend stationed overseas in Germany (redundant, I suppose). He’s Air Force, and he’s an interesting guy. He has some notions about life and what-not that are familiar to me because I had similar ones about 10 years ago. Conincidentally enough, he’s about 10 years younger than I am. I’m not saying that age has anything to do with this, it’s just an observation.

Back then…way back when I was in my mid-twenties…I was finally recovering from a divorce that had left me bankrupt and forced me to deal with depression on a level I never had before. And someday, when it doesn’t still sting too much to think about the mistakes I made, I might write it into a story. Not a memior or auto-biography. More like a fictionalized account of true events.

Anyway…in going through all of this, I had my first taste of true introspection. Not just the surface stuff. But the deep probing questions that kept me awake at night wondering “why am I doing this to myself?” and “he’s not worth it, you know that, right?” and all of the soul searching that goes with late-night moments like that.

When all was said and done, I was a better person for the experience. But back then, I also thought that those few moments of introspection meant I had all the answers. I was brilliant and knew more than the rest of the world because of what I’d learned about myself.

So not true. I know that now.

But what does that have to do with writing?

Very glad you asked.

When I get a story idea…when it first penetrates my skull and begs for my attention, I want to write it. I love it, I adore it, I revel in it, and I focus all of my concentration to this lovely singing in my skull. But unless it’s a short story (and I mean less than 2,000 words), that’s completely the wrong time to try and write it. Anything I put on paper then will be stunning, and passionate. And fragmented, incomplete, and quite possibly un-editable because I’m so madly in love with it.

But if I let it sit for a few days…weeks…months…and gestate, it becomes much more complete. I go from thinking I have the best story ever written sitting in my skull, to knowing what it’s missing, how to fill in some of the blanks, and that I will probably never write the best story ever told, but at least I can put something comprehensive on paper.

I’m doing that right now with the novella I’m working on. Two months ago I knew I had to tell the story. It came to me in a dream, and I could feel everything my characters felt just by recalling the dream. I had to write it. I didn’t write it though. It’s been festering in my brain ever since. And now that I’ve given myself enough distance from it without ever putting more than loose thoughts on paper, I know what it needs. I know how it starts, and ends, and what comes in the middle, and all I need to figure out now is some more detail about my characters.

I don’t suspect most writer’s work this way. Not a lot of those I’ve talked to do. But maybe I’m wrong. Would you rather write the idea down while you’re still honeymooning it? Or give it the stability of a good long-term relationship before you even put a word on paper? Or something in the middle?