I have a new writing idea

It came to me in a dream last night.

(Don't groan at the lameness of that. It's really not a bad place to get ideas.)

However, it's still just an idea--an idea even less defined than all the other writing ideas that seemed promising but never came to fruition. The problem with those was that they came to me while I was in the middle of an existing project, and by the time I had finished writing, my interest in the newer idea had dwindled.

But I finished writing my latest novel several months ago, and I'm trying to decide where I want to go from here.

The scenario that came to me in last night's dream is, like my previous book, historical fiction. When I woke up, I had a time period, a setting, two principal characters, a central event, some semblance of a genre, and a vague sense of some of the "issues" that I want the piece to explore. This premise has quite a few themes in common with my previous novel. I'm not sure whether those themes went into the dream or whether I worked them in afterward, but that doesn't matter. I enjoy exploring variations on the same theme.

So it all sounds pretty substantial, right? The problem is, this project would involve at least twice the historical research that the last book required (lots of time and money invested in lengthy, complex, and sometimes out-of-print tomes). For originality's sake, I prefer to write about more obscure bits of history, and this is the price I pay.

Nonetheless, I would like to venture ahead. Once the boys' vacation is over and my husband and I have a bit more time to ourselves, I'm going to ask for his input. His help was invaluable to my last novel even though I pretty much had it written in my head. This time, I need someone well-read in the history of this period (and he certainly qualifies) to bounce ideas and questions off of. As personally invested and stubborn I can be when it comes to my writing, I recognize that the writer is not the only person involved in the novel. I am writing this to be read, appreciated, and enjoyed--by other people. I don't think that asking for his collaboration makes it any less "my" book. He is, after all, the only person who knows me as well as I know myself.

Whatever comes of my new idea, I'm excited. I think I had this dream for a reason, and I'm going to try to make the most of my inspiration.