I’m swirling around. I’m like a leaf floating in the breeze, or a twig bobbing up and down in a stream. My mind is lots of places at the same time. I can’t pin myself down. I can’t stop myself swirling.

What on earth am I talking about?

Truth is, I have a few things going on at the moment. Working with an editor on getting the next novel out. Working with an illustrator to bring the next picture book to life. Even planning a bit of a rejig for this website. But apart from that, something else is going on.

I’m in that “in between” stage. A few long term projects are about to be completed. This means it’s time for me to think about what comes next. And that’s when the swirling begins.

You might think the problem would be coming up with ideas for the next story. Absolutely, positively not. Ideas are never a problem. I’ve got lots of ideas. I get them from talking to people. I get them from current events – from reading about them in the papers and hearing about them on the TV news. Plus a few novels I’ve read recently have really got me fired up about new ideas. No, when it comes to ideas, I have so many I don’t quite know what to do with them.

And this is where the swirling occurs. All of those ideas are whooshing around in my head, spinning and tumbling like loose socks in a washing machine. It can be hard to get a handle on every single unique idea that’s whizzing around. Every so often, something catches my attention and I think “Hey, that’s a good one.” But mostly it’s just a blur of movement – thoughts and concepts just whirling around.

So what is the next stage? At some point, I hope that evolution will play a role. The not-so-good ideas will gradually get whittled down, leaving the really strong ones more readily able to be identified. And once I have a collection of really good ideas, hopefully I can start to build a story around them.

In the meantime, I’m more than happy to just let them all keep swirling.