I have an idea

So I have an idea. I think I said. An idea for a novel. It has legs and arms and maybe, even a face. A face, perhaps, that no one can ever love, but a face nonetheless.


There's a lot of work involved in getting this idea to a stage where it can be called a story.

That work is, at the moment, problematic.

As soon as I hit on this idea I thought I'd want nothing more than to inflate the shapeless outline I'd come up with and see it bobbing before me as a finished (I'll finish the metaphor) balloon.

Part of me wants that. Wants it a lot. Another part keeps thinking irreverent, unrelated and ridiculous thoughts - and this should be a pretty serious book. A thriller of sorts.

The solution, it turns out, is simple!

I sit my brain down and try to set some boundaries:

Alright brain, multiple projects. How do ya like that? You be funny in some other writing and I can be serious business in this novel thing. Eh? Eh?

Brain says nothing. I sit him down to work at a blank page. He does nothing.

As soon as I decided this course of action all comic thinking dries up.

I inadvertently cured the incompatibility between my mood and what I want to write for the next year or so.

A lesson learned! My mind is contrary and I have no direct influence over whither or hither it may dance.

I can, though, build a maze around it so that I guide it's flow in the direction, roughly, of my end goal.

So, with mindset adjusted, I sat to write last night.

I got 500 words done. Don't laugh!

It's not at all connected with the plan I had outlined. It was part inspired by a music video I enjoyed just before I wrote it (which got me thinking on the curse of true originality again).

In spite of that I liked it. Not in a technical way. I hate everything about the language, setting, structure and technique. I thought it was something I'd want to read. A story I want to know more of.

Someone is in trouble and I want to do some digging and find out why.