The well of ideas...

So a deadline for a response from a publisher to a submission came and went (a month ago to be precise) and still nada. This is more than a little irksome when considered in relation to a friend of mine who submitted something to a publisher like a week ago and its already been read and is going to the editorial meeting next monday. Grrrrr. Why are the publishers I submit to the slowest in the bunch? Probably as a punshment for my impatience. Still, the outline of my attempt at YA (currently on a go slow as I'm in a bad mood) has been forwarded to an american publisher so this is progress and I like progress. I like offers of publication even better. I have no idea what their time frame is though so its back to the waiting game. Although the last time I did a multiple submission I was left in agonies trying to decide between two offers, I am at the point where multiple submissions seems like a good idea again.

I have an idea percolating in my head for a short story too. This developed from a comment a friend made recently. I hope I can bring it together and make it work as I haven't written any short stories for a while. When I go looking for ideas I never get them. You just have to be listening and observing all the time so when that comment/image/feeling turns up you recognize it and take a hold of it. Ideas grow in their own sweet time too. Some take hours, others years. The idea for my novel Jack the Viking was a happy marriage between a story beginning I'd written two or three years earlier about a bullied boy who always had his nose stuck in a book about Vikings and the image of Merry and Eowyn waiting to ride down together into battle in the 3rd Lord of the Rings movie. What would it be like I wondered to be a kid, never faced with anything like that before to suddenly be required to go into battle with a high probability of injury or death. My best stories are those that just turn up unasked on the doorstep. I'd like to have a magic well of ideas I could draw on whenever needed but i don't but hey thats a good idea for a story...