Tag: on writing

On Religion and Spirituality in the Mendaihu Universe

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One of my biggest worries when it comes to the Mendaihu Universe novels, to be honest, is that it would be taken as a ‘religious’ novel, or that it would be mistaken for a soapbox for my own ideas on spirituality.  Granted, the novels have a heavy amount of spirituality, belief and faith involved in the world building, so it might happen yet.

Thankfully my worries have been misplaced so far.

The whole idea of using spirituality in the MU is not to preach or to proselytize, but to imagine a reality in which a belief system, its tenets, miracles, and everything else is not only real, but a natural part of society.  Like the use of spiritual chakra energy as a source of power and strength in anime like Dragonball Z or Naruto, the enlightened people of the MU use their spirit energy for many useful things: innerspeak (clairaudience), physical sensing (clairsentience), reality seeing (claircognizance), and so on.  More to the point, these abilities are part and parcel of Meraladian life — innerspeak is the ‘silent half’ of the Anjshé language, where the intent is projected psychically while the words are spoken, for instance.  All these abilities are from ‘within’ — that is, their souls.  It’s a part of their life organically as well as spiritually.

That’s not to say that I’m ignoring zealotry and bigotry, of course.  There are characters from ADoS forward who use cultural bigotry, even if their reasoning for it is an innocent (to them) ‘you wouldn’t understand’.   The new as-yet-unnamed MU novel reveals a new generation of believers of the One of All Sacred who think of themselves as a special enlightened class personally chosen by their deity — something Denni Johnson would have been horrified to see.  There are those who are committed to their version of their belief, regardless as to whether it conforms to reality.

 

I will admit that the terrorism that we’ve witnessed in the past twenty years or so (including the past few days) has been a bit of an influence in this universe as well.  The Mendaihu and Shenaihu both contain extremists in their ranks (the kiralla and the nuhm’ndah, respectively), and both have their physical embodiments of such extremism.  But as with everything in this universe, nothing is ever black and white, good and evil, and the MU is no different.  There are gray areas, where the best of intentions lead to bad conclusions, and vice versa.  This is precisely why the Bridgetown Trilogy is not about good triumphing over evil, but about doing the right thing, despite overwhelming outside influence.  And this is also why I chose to paint both sides as fallible.  Both sides have had blood on their hands at some point in their histories.  Neither is without sin.

I’ll also admit I’ve been thinking about this since Friday, after the events that took place in Paris.  Understandably I was shocked by the terrorism that unfolded, but I was also equally as shocked by the white noise that followed in social media — the blaming of an entire religion (or all religion, for that matter), the puerile political taunting, the ‘how can you feel bad when [x] is happening elsewhere’ shaming, and the reactive surface emotions of revenge and vilification.  That white noise, thankfully, has receded somewhat over the weekend.  As they say, cooler heads prevail.  I also saw a beautiful outpouring of compassion and love coming from the same channels, and those are the voices that have remained as the others have begun to die away.

And this, by far, was the hardest part of writing the Bridgetown Trilogy:  trying to make the events of the novels a global spiritual and religious event, and not something that only the main characters are feeling.  I felt that it needed much more than just the population reacting like they were in a Michael Bay film, running away from explosions in glorious slo-mo.  I wanted a more realistic reaction:  This is really happening.  I’m angry/sad/terrified, but I’m not helpless.  I will either stay and fight (accept the personal awakening) or take flight and protect those I love (refuse a personal awakening).  The trick was to passively show these nameless background people reacting, even if it was in just a sentence or two.  The reader sees this three times in the first few chapters of ADoS:  via clairaudience when Nehalé performs the Awakening ritual and senses everyone’s reaction; offscreen, with Nick and Sheila mentioning the number of witnesses they’ve spoken with just after the ritual; and onscreen, when Poe passes a car on the highway on the way to the Crest and notices how eager its occupants are to get out of town.  I pepper these throughout the three books; just a mention or two to remind the reader that the rest of the world is out there, and they’ve been affected as well.

As a writer of fiction, I’m not going to claim my way is the best way to see reality, nor am I trying to push a message.  I’m merely telling a story and unfolding it the best and truest way I know how.  I can only hope that what the reader gets out of it is entertainment, and maybe something to think about as well.

Hidden Stories

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Ann Leckie's Ancillary Mercy, book 3 in the Imperial Radch series.
Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Mercy, book 3 in the Imperial Radch series.

A. and I were talking about Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Mercy last night (she’d read it the day it came out, I’m about three-quarters finished), specifically about how we really enjoyed the many and varying characters in the series. One thing that came up was that we were both fascinated by a specific twenty-year gap in the lead character’s history that happens early on in the first book (Ancillary Justice). What happened between the fade-out and the fade-in?  Where did she acquire the certain things she now owned?  Do we ever find out?  Is it important to the main story arc, or is it simply a passage of time between important moments?

I’ll tell you a writer’s secret:  us authors love doing that.

There are many and varied reasons for it.  Sometimes a rose is just a rose:  the character lived their life doing things that had no important bearing on the story. Maybe they just needed to lie low for a while.  Sometimes it’s a big secret: it’s a specific gap of time that the narrative will return to much later on, when it’s important to the story.  Sometimes we never find out exactly why.

Me?  I love doing it because it’s part of my world building process.  For me, it gives the character space to breathe in their own privacy for a bit.  In A Division of Souls, there’s a space of five years between the time Caren and Denni’s parents are killed in action and the present time of the book itself.  I did this for two reasons: for the two sisters to come to terms with what happened, and to show that the current events actually started manifesting themselves a lot earlier than anyone thought.

I call these gaps hidden stories.  The main arc doesn’t focus on these events, doesn’t need to.  But just the same, they’re part of the framework of the whole.  There’s usually a solid reason for this time gap (such as in Ancillary Justice, where Breq is basically keeping off someone’s radar), and it can be extremely useful and malleable.  This is where the writer can say “this is what happened between [Novel X] and [Novel Y].”  Another good example of that is the previous Naruto movie The Last, which takes place between the time gap between the final chapters of the series, 699 and 700.  We find that there’s a gap of time that we can use as a bit of a playground for new and/or related stories if we so choose to write them.

Which, of course, means that the seventy years between The Balance of Light and the new (and still untitled) Mendaihu Universe story is chock full of mystery!  A lot could happen in an average human life span.  I’ve given myself quite a bit of space for hidden stories in that stretch of time.

Maybe sometime down the road I’ll tell you a few. 🙂

On Writing: Mental Playgrounds

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I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been utilizing the daily word website 750 Words off and on over the last few years, and using it as a sort of ‘mental playground’ where I can have fun playing with ideas that happen to pop into my head.  In short, it’s a simple site where you log on and crank out at least 750 words for the day.  It doesn’t matter what it is…poetry, prose, automatic writing, it doesn’t judge as long as you hit the goal.  It’s a perfect place if you have trouble getting yourself started, but it’s also a great place for training yourself to write something without Editor Brain (or Revision Brain, for that matter) getting in the way.  I’ve used it for both, and it’s definitely helped get the writing juices flowing.

Now?  I use it as a testing ground for new ideas.  I’ve come up with at least three solid novel ideas this way, which will become future projects a little further down the road.  A half hour’s riffing on an idea really can go a long way, and with a few weeks’ worth of consistent work, one can have the makings of a complete outline, or at least a very rough draft.

Lately, I’ve been using it to try out different ideas for this new Mendaihu Universe story.  The first few chapters of any new project often end up sounding very disjointed and lacking continuity, and it’s very obvious that I’m still trying to figure out where the hell I’m going with it.  [Case in point, during my transcription from longhand to Word document yesterday, I noticed a scene starting midday, but changing to evening within a page.]  Which is fine, considering the first draft is always the roughest, but at some point before I get too far, I have to lay some ground rules.  I have to say, okay — enough floundering, time to give this story meaning and direction.

This is where the 750 can come in handy for me:  it’s what I call the outtake reel.  I’ll come up with a specific scene and riff on it, see how it fits in the context of the overall story, if it’s true to the characters, and above all, if the idea will be useful down the line.  Sometimes it’ll work, sometimes it won’t.  It won’t be the final take, but it’ll at least give me something to shoot for.  And with this week’s exercises, I found myself rewriting the same scene that I’d come up with way back in 1993 for the first Vigil outtake, only updated and with different characters.  I hadn’t planned on using the scene ever again, but it seemed to fit so naturally here that I ran with it.  It’ll most likely be somewhere in Act 2 of this current book.  In the process, it also clarified a number of plot ideas I’d had for this project, so I won’t be floundering nearly as much anymore.

 

Having a mental playground for your novel ideas is always a good thing.  You may have to train yourself (like I did) to realize that these are only rehearsals and rough outtakes and not part of the final version, but the outcome of these exercises is almost always fruitful.  By letting your characters run around freely, you end up learning a bit more about them, and in the process you’ll know how they’ll react within the scenes you place them in.   By letting yourself riff on an idea that may or may not even be a part of the current story, you might even come up with a much clearer idea of what you do need to work on.

You don’t necessarily need a site like 750 Words; it might be an ‘outtake’ document on your PC, a dedicated notebook, or a handful of scrap paper.  Whatever works for you.  Like I said, this is the rehearsal stage…it’s where you work out the idea, get rid of the stuff that doesn’t work, and work on strengthening the stuff that does.  And above all, it’s where you have fun with it, with Editor and Revision Brains off having a cocktail somewhere else.

On Worldbuilding: Fluid History

Jon Chaisson1 Comment

John: “Hey there, Jeremy, what do you know about holes?”

Jeremy HIllary Boob, PhD: “There are simply no holes in my education.”

–Yellow Submarine

If you’ve ever watched any kind of documentary or series, there’s always some element of “we’re not entirely sure what happened at this point in time, but we can make an educated guess by looking at the following clues” or some such.  The further back we go in time, the harder it is to pinpoint the date of an event; eventually the most we can say is “sometime during the [x] Era.”   Those are extreme examples, though.  Sometimes our view of history changes within a few decades, when we look at the events of a specific time with the eyes of a different generation, maybe even a different culture.

I started thinking about this sometime ago when I started writing the new Mendaihu Universe story.  One of the subplots deals with the events that took place in the original Bridgetown Trilogy, though this new story takes place about seventy years later. Without going into too much detail, our histories of our heroes in that trilogy have become somewhat embellished, even after so short a time.  Denni Johnson, the teenager who had ascended as the earthbound deity the One of All Sacred, is now viewed as a saint, complete with a marble statue that thousands flock to and pray at.  Her sister Caren and Caren’s ARU partner Alec Poe, who never ascended as far as Denni did, are seen as more than human; Caren is believed to be an angelic protector, and Poe is seen as a Mighty Warrior.

And yet, all three were merely human.  Gifted with psionic abilities, just like anyone else in the Mendaihu Universe who have gone through an awakening ritual, but still — they were just as human as the rest of us.

Part of the focus on this new story is how certain people and events in history get changed over the years.  We may have documents, we may have databases and videos, but it still boils down to how the person or event is seen by the viewer.  We put amazing people on pedestals, even if their personalities were less than stellar, because regardless of their infallibility, they changed the world in some way.  The same could be said of horrible people as well; their vileness goes down in history as a grim reminder (even if, on a personal level, they weren’t one hundred percent vile).  We rarely look at these things objectively; we always have some emotional attachment to them, however big or small.

The evolution of historical accuracy fluctuates a lot more than we’d like it to, quite often because of this emotional attachment.  In this new story, the views of the new devout (those who follow the steps of the One of All Sacred — that is, Denni — and hope to find clarity in their lives) have become reasonably established.  However, schisms have already broken out; there are those who see Denni as a savior, and others who see her as an ascended but flawed human.  There are the Elders, the spiritual leaders who have been around for centuries, who are also splitting: those who have embraced the evolution of belief, and those who want to retain the status quo.

It’s a bit of a mess, but that’s the fascinating part of history as it happens.  No one really knows what the hell is going to happen next until it does.

 

In a Room Other Than One’s Own

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Calvin & Hobbes @Bill Watterson
Calvin & Hobbes ©Bill Watterson

I’ve gotten pretty comfy writing back here in Spare Oom.  I’ve got my PC for goofing off online research and music soundtracks.  I’ve got our old love seat back here, which I’ve been using for my longhand writing.  I keep the window slightly ajar and the blinds open to remind me there’s a world outside.  I’m just down the hall from the living room so if A needs me, she only needs to call out.

But what about writing elsewhere?

I’ve worked elsewhere in the apartment over the years.  I restarted the last chapters of The Process of Belief back when my computer was in the living room.  I’d sit next to A on the couch and work on the Bridgetown Trilogy revision while we had something going on the TV.  I’ve worked at the kitchen table while A and one of her friends watched a movie.  And recently I’ve done some longhand out there as well.

Writing elsewhere can definitely be a great exercise, especially if you’re someone who doesn’t want to miss out on deadlines, self-imposed or otherwise.

During our trip to Manhattan a short while ago, I managed a few pages during the flights, and I got a few more at the end of the day in our hotel room.  And over the years, I’ve written in all sorts of places.  There’s a passage in A Division of Souls that was written in a cheap hotel where I decided to stay rather than drive home during a snowstorm.  I’ve worked on the Bridgetown Trilogy revision in hotels in Portland, Cambridge, Seattle, and even Paris.  A number of scenes, notes, and brainstorming ideas for all three Bridgetown books were written during SF cons.  And I almost always get a good portion done during vacations.

writers_on_vacation

It can definitely be done, if you’re willing to work.  That’s not to say that you should abstain from having fun during your vacations.  By all means, go out and see the world!  Do some people-watching.  Pick up on localisms, regional cultures, things otherwise mundane that would actually brighten up your characters.  Listen to how they speak, check out what music they listen to.  But at the same time, feel absolutely free to sit down at that sidewalk café, drink your coffee and eat your beignet, and think about nothing else but being in the moment and enjoying it.

We’ll be heading out to London in a few days, and I plan on getting a lot of writing done while we’re there.  I have notebooks at the ready, my camera for reference shots, a shopping list of books and cds to look for.  But this will also be a continuation of our previous trip there last fall for Worldcon.  That trip turned into a long bucket list of music-related places to visit (Abbey Road, Baker Street, Berwick Street, Savile Row, etc.), historic museums (Tate Modern, Victoria & Albert, Portrait Gallery, etc.), and points of interest (St Paul’s, Waterstone’s, Whitehall/Westminster).  This is going to be the Extended Remix, in which we’ll hit all those places again as well as those we missed the last time, this time at our leisure. [Yes, I just pronounced that as “lezh-err” instead of “lee-zhur” in my head.  I’m totally ready for this trip.]

Point being:  By all means, if you want to get some writing done while on vacation, even and especially if you don’t exactly need to, go nuts!  Go for it!  Write like the mad, crazed weirdo that you are!  It’s well worth it if you decide to make it enjoyable.  Don’t worry about perfection, just have fun with it!  Play with a subplot.  Come up with an outtake that you can share online with your blog followers.  Play around with character development.

Just be sure to balance it with just having fun in the real world!

On Writing: Point of Viewpoint, Or Different Mindsets for Different Styles

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You’ve heard me (and other writers) talk about being ‘in the mood’ or ‘in the right mindset’ to write whatever projects they’re working on.  In the past it’s ended up being a crutch; I’d waste a good twenty minutes digging through my music collection trying to find the perfect album to listen to for a particular writing session.  I used to be really bad with that, but I’ve gotten better.  Most of the time now I listen to whatever newer release I happen to have close at hand, or if a specific album if I want to give that one another listen.

Actually, this post isn’t about that.  It’s about something I was subconsciously aware of for years, but just recently started monitoring, and it’s kind of interesting.  At least to me, anyway.

This one’s about where my mind is while working on whatever project I have in front of me.  At present I’m letting my imagination run rampant within the confines of my created world for the new Mendaihu Universe story…I picture novels as one long story of character evolution, where the the only rules are that nothing remains static and that consequences just as important as the actions.  I tend to let myself get well and truly lost in my created world; that is, ‘lost’ in the sense that if my brain suddenly and unexpectedly comes up with a doozy of a plot twist and I know it’ll work as part of the whole, I’ll let it take center stage and not hold back.  I think of it as writing for an audience of myself, though with full expectation that others will want to read and understand it as well.

Writing nonfiction is somewhat similar, only the boundaries are much tighter…at least that’s been my experience with Walk in Silence.  The focus is on the subject matter’s evolution within the confines of reality…thus imagination is reined in considerably, only given to the prose itself.  This is also true with my blog posts.  Not counting the more personal entries over at my LJ where my writing is more freestyle, I try to give my writing at least a little bit of professionalism.  When I’m writing nonfiction, I’m writing for an audience other than myself.

Poetry and song lyrics are a different beast, where I tend to be more emotional with my style.  I started writing poetry and songs back in my late teens as a release, but also as a playground for words, where I’d let myself come up with odd metaphors and weird imagery.  There’s really no rules here…I just riff it from start to finish.  This stuff is totally a personal indulgence, though I’ve been told by listeners that my Flying Bohemians and jeb! lyrics were pretty cool, so I’m fine with that.

The fascinating thing is that, now that I’m working on the new MU story, writing blog entries and (soon) working on Walk in Silence again, I find myself conscious of how my mind will shift from one style to another.  It can be tricky, especially if you have a lot of disparate writing ideas milling about in your head, but after all these years I’ve managed to make it work.  I think part of it is what I call the ‘going in’ phase of the session.  For instance, if I’m about to write the MU story, even before I put pen to paper I’ll start thinking about the characters, get in their heads and emotions for a few minutes to remember where I was.

[Noted, this is where the writing session soundtrack often comes in, and why I’m often a sucker for a certain mood in the songs.  The music helps me set the tone of the section I’m writing.  This is also true for nonfiction, or at least with Walk in Silence; for that I’m actually listening to the music I’m writing about so I can connect with the subject more clearly and emotionally.]

I think now that I’ve made sense of how my creative mind shifts from project to project, I’ve become better at giving each project a tighter focus.  I know how I’m doing it, so I’m less worried about whether or not I’m doing it right…as long as I’m doing it my own logical way, then that’s all that matters.

On Writing Again: Getting Back On the Horse

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I’m my own worst critic when it comes to writing, and especially when it involves failure to keep to a writing schedule.  I made a joke of it late last year by calling it “Best Laid Plans”…mainly for the reason that whenever I went online to excitedly reveal what I’m currently working on, those plans would crash and burn spectacularly.  More to the point though, I’m constantly putting guilt on myself when I’m not writing.  I get that nagging itch that feels very much like Sunday night at 8pm, when I’ve realized I’ve left three classes’ worth of major homework undone until that point.  I yell at myself for being an idiot for not doing it earlier.  I gripe and moan and do half-assed work because I’m rushing it at the last minute.  And worst of all, there’s that one tiny voice in there, almost inaudible, that says you know, if you keep this up, you ain’t gonna get shit-all published in your lifetime.  Gods how I LOATHE that one voice…because it speaks a very bitter truth.

So after I get over the guilt and the shame and the irritation, I shut myself up and get back on the horse.

I haven’t exactly been lazy this past week, when it comes to writing.  One of my coworkers was out the latter half of the week and ended up with double-duty for those three days, so I realized I probably would not be running on full power.  I decided to let myself slack on the daily words, as they weren’t time-sensitive or the main project, and skipped on a few whiteboard points as well.  This left me with just enough brainpower to kick out some new words for Walk in Silence as well as decide how I was going to integrate them into the manuscript.  All told, I averaged about 500 words daily, and I’m happy with that result.

So now that everything’s back to normal, what am I going to do now?  Get back on the horse, of course of course.  I’m already doing so now by writing this entry, and starting tomorrow I’ll be hitting the daily words again.  I’ll even be able to hit the whiteboard points again.  Yes, I know, Best Laid Plans…but I’ll take it a day at a time, get done what needs being done, and be happy that I’d made forward progress.  Sometimes that’s the only thing you can do.

Now, if only I’d been this proactive with my homework back in high school…

On Not Writing: Trying Not to Feel Guilty for Taking Days Off

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DSC02114b
In which I am the 1,459,476,874,686th person to take this picture in San Francisco.

After so many years at my day jobs, I was finally able to take my birthday off (January 22nd), so I decided to give myself a nice long four-day weekend.  We both had that Thursday off, so we decided to go out and about and have fun.  We hit a few of our favorite spots (bookstores, a yarn store, our local sushi boat restaurant) as well as visit a few new ones (Alamo Square, Bi-Rite Creamery and Brenda’s Meat & Three on Divisadero).  We even watched some anime that evening.  All in all it was a nice relaxing day, and the weather was perfect for it.  I spent most of Friday afternoon in the dusty dollar bins of Amoeba Records as a birthday present to myself. Yesterday we went to see a Tom Stoppard play (one of my favorite writers) and went out for dinner afterwards.  And today has been for cleaning and shopping.  Only now, at 3pm on Sunday, am I finally making an attempt to get some writing done.

Aside from a few blog posts and one day of daily words, my output these past few days has been pathetic.

Thing is, I hardly made an attempt.  There were a few moments there where I felt the pull of my daily words or my personal journal, but I chose against it.  It wasn’t a decision made out of being lazy–it was one made on purpose.  This was a way for me to remind myself that it’s okay to take a day off every now and again.  Even if there’s work to be done, sometimes it’s better to stop and smell the roses instead.

We writers often pride ourselves on being able to write whenever and wherever and for ridiculously long bursts at that, but we’re also our own worst enemies when it comes to deciding not to write.  Sometimes we must because of deadlines, or because it’s the only way to get any work done at all, but other times we don’t know when to quit for the day.  Yes, we could be out there watching a football game or walking around the neighborhood, or even sitting on our butts for six hours playing video games, but too often we deny ourselves that moment of entertainment.  Every moment without pen in hand or fingers on keyboard is a moment wasted.

That bit of guilt is still there, days later.  I only managed the daily words on Friday, breaking a 23-day streak, and I haven’t written in my journal since Wednesday.  I didn’t write any new words for Walk in Silence, but I did reread a few passages just to remind myself where I was.  The only thing I’ve done that remotely involves writing lately is read Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style as part of my self-assigned homework.  After years of avoiding active study of style manuals and books on how to write well (caused by a tenth grade English teacher who tried to teach me how to analyze prose within an inch of its life), I thought it was high time to face that demon once and for all.

I know I’m still going to feel guilty that I squandered all these days off and broke that streak, but life goes on.  I truly enjoyed the days off.  I got errands done that needed doing.  I let myself spend a bit of coin on one of my favorite hobbies.  I shot some pretty decent photos of the local scenery.  And I got to spend some serious facetime with my wife, who usually finds me hiding up back in Spare Oom instead, nose at the grindstone.

Besides, my writing time will be back to normal come tomorrow.

On Writing: Stealth Mode

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I had another crazy idea the other day.  You know how it is…when I really should be working on my main project (in this case, the book Walk in Silence), my brain decides it wants to try writing a new, exciting story idea.  Equal parts Ooh Shiny and No I’m Not Procrastinating Really I’m Not, to be honest.

This crazy idea was to unconsciously write a novel.

Here’s the thing–my daily non-project words as of late usually end up being 750 to 1000-word passages of one ongoing theme or another.  I’d done this previously, last year (it’s the cat-and-crow idea I mentioned in this blog previoiusly), and it’s a good way for me to keep in the practice of figuring out the theme and plot of a story.

So as usual when I’m on the treadmill at the Y, listening to my mp3 player and contemplating my next writing moves (yes, that is really what I do when I’m at the gym), I started doing a bit of math in my head.  If my daily words at 750Words.com are hit every day, and I write something with the same theme each time, I’ll have a full novel of around 70 to 90k words by March.  Sort of like an extended NaNo project, only instead of trying to shoehorn around 2k words in one of the worst months for productivity, it’s a more leisurely three-month workout during the slowest business quarter.

So what is this about writing unconsciously?  Well, it’s not like I’m trying to write something without paying attention…it’s more of an attempt to write something organically, letting it expand on its own.  But more to the point, this would be about writing a novel without really planning to.  Writing a novel just for the hell of it, instead of trying to write my next attempt at publication.  I have no idea if it’ll pan out, or even if it does, whether it’ll be publishable after revision.  I don’t do that all that often–let’s be honest, a lot of writers just don’t have the time to do such a thing in the first place–but considering my daily 750 is non-project, non-serious writing, it would be interesting to see if I can pull this off.  Thus the stealth mode–writing but not paying that much attention to it.

I may fail miserably on this, or it may be my unexpected heartbreaking work of staggering genius.  Won’t know unless I write the damn thing, yes?

On Writing: Dead Letter Office

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I know I’m not the only writer who comes up with more ideas than they can possibly work with. Just today I’ve seen at least three Tweets from published writers opining on ideas they would love to work on, but alas time is short and other projects loom. These possible ideas may never come to light. And the thought of orphaned ideas kills us every time.

This popped into my mind the other day while I was doing some playing around with a possible future project. I use my daily practice words as a Word Playground just to give my brain a stretch (and to prime the pump, if need be). I had a peculiar waking dream the other morning that I was part of a musical family band — sort of like the Osmonds, only set in the 80s-90s — and thought I’d riff on that. The practice words turned into a ‘Where Are They Now?’ story, in which each member would tell the same part of their shared history, only their views were vastly different. The words came quick and easy, as did the separate character voices.

So, you’re asking. When the hell are you going to get around to writing that, when you’ve already got a bajillion other things going on? That is a very good question. I may get to it, I may not. I really don’t know. Does that bother me? It used to in the past, a bit. But since I’ve been writing for most of my adult life and have worked on a large number of projects over the years that have seen various states of completion, I’m not too worried about it.

It also got me thinking–what about the ideas I like, that I may not ever get around to working on? The ones that sing to me, but not enough for them to take precedence? Are they going to languish in my PC and Dropbox folders and on various scraps of paper, gathering dust until the end of time? I’m not talking about my trunked ideas and novels, the ones I know aren’t going anywhere anytime soon…I’m talking about the Word Playground ideas, the ideas that have merit and have been plotted out to some extent.

I had this crazy idea that, if I was going to sign off on an idea I knew I’d never get to, why let it die in my own imagination? Why not let someone borrow it? And then I started thinking about it more: what if I created these miniature worlds, laid the barest of rules and outlines, and shared them with other writers? It made sense in an odd way–there are countless fanfic writers out there who love coming up with their own stories based in someone else’s created world. Why not donate these orphaned ideas to someone who’ll give them more love than I could?

Of course reality always sneaks in on crazy ideas like this, bringing me back to earth. I wouldn’t be making a dime. I probably wouldn’t even be getting credit. I’d be building the framework, but the creator would change it into something not even remotely me. And so on.

Sure, it’s a wacky batshit idea that I probably should not entertain, especially at my point in my publishing career (read: yeah, yeah, I’ll get a book out eventually). Still…it’s a thought I’ll keep in the back of my mind anyway, just so I don’t feel too guilty about all those story ideas I have that’ll never get written.