I’m solidly halfway through the draft of the current WIP. Thus I am thinking about the next WIP. The seed must be planted early (in my case), given that I could be going through multiple iterations of “one WIP” before it turns out to be something that’ll survive.
This current WIP’s “original seed” was identified years ago. It’s like that whole idea of “It doesn’t take 10 seconds to do a 10-second sketch… It takes 10 years.”
Specifically, I’m wondering if the next WIP (which would be my 4th novel) should have no speculative elements. I like speculative elements, but I’m not sure if I want to set up the expectation that I will always use speculative elements. Presently, some of my short stories are speculation-free, with Channel Locked being the longest such story. I enjoy both speculation and so-called “reality-based” logic, so maybe it’s time I did a full novel where there is “only reality.”
That said, unbelievable things happen my supposedly non-speculative stories anyway. In Channel Locked, it’s vacuum cleaners and the storm. Haha. Nature and technology are frequently unbelievable. There is no coincidence.