I asked Whistler writer, Rebecca Wood Barrett, how she knows if something has got the legs to make it all the way to a novel.
She said, “I think if an idea haunts you for a long time, it’s something worth exploring. Someone once said we don’t have to worry about finding our obsessions – they will find us! But recognising that “big idea” has a lot to do with faith, too.”
I’ve heard it said that you can analyse some writer’s works and see a recurring theme, an idea they keep revisiting and exploring, something that wouldn’t let them go… Stephen Spielberg, for instance, and the idea of the lost boy. Discovering your obsessions can lead to greatness.
How do you know what you’re obsessed with, though? What you keep circling back to?
For boot-camp exercise 17, take to the page with this task in mind. Write about something you didn’t like as a child… but that you do like now.
