And again the Muse speaks . . .

I've had yet another idea for a short story occur to me, just recently.


At least I'm hoping it's a short story. I'm still working on The Sorcerer's Daughter and I don't know if my poor old, abused subconscious has enough RAM to handle two works of that length at the same time.


This one, unlike the previous one I mentioned a couple weeks ago, is science fiction, which is something I'm much more comfortable with. It actually started with an idea I had a long time ago, something that was just a basic idea with no details that I hadn't been able to develop.


Well, it's developing now. I've got some context, a setting, a basic story, even an idea for an ending.


Still, I need to let it sit just a bit longer. It's not quite ready for me to start writing.


That's what happened to the previous thing I mentioned here the other day--it wasn't quite ready and I started on it anyway. What I've written on that story isn't bad, and I'll return to it one day, but my enthusiasm for that little project has sort of faded.


Anyway, that's what I'll be thinking about over this holiday--developing this story idea into an actual story.


Where am I on The Sorcerer's Daughter? Still waiting on notes from my first readers right now. I'm about to begin rereading it, after staying away from it for over a month. A few things have occurred to me in the interim, a few enhancements for the basic story, and I'm hoping since it's been a while since I've read it that I'll approach it with fresh eyes now. I've got a week off from work coming up and that's going to be one of the things I'm going to work on during that time.


I do have a title for this new short story, not that it'll tell you all that much. I'm calling it "Unus."


The rest of the plan for my own holiday? I got some lovely Chinese takeout in the fridge for lunch. There is a full slate of football--both professional and college--coming up, and, unlike previous Thanksgiving NFL games, the ones happening today actually have playoff ramifications


Football. Writing, Food. As good as it gets.

The 200th Supernatural

TV shows' casts and crews legitimately get excited when they reach their 200th episode.


It's rare and a worth celebrating. That's around ten years worth of shows, and most shows commemorate the occasion with a Very Special Episode. In many cases they introduce a major twist to the plot that changes the show forever, or they do a parody episode of their own show, or, in a couple of cases, they have an episode that, in the end, turns out to never have actually happened.


I've yet to see one of these that didn't turn out to be disappointing. They may have been fun but, in the end, they really didn't do all that much in service to the show. They turn out to be wastes of time.


However, I really liked Supernatural--the Musical, which was Supernatural's 200th.


I realize I'm probably in the minority here. There are many episodes of this show that I haven't seen yet, so I'm hardly a scholar. I know many people were disappointed that there was no Misha Collins or Mark Sheppard or any of the other regulars besides Sam and Dean.


To me, though, that was what made this episode so charming. It was a basic Supernatural episode--they discover a case, go to the area, get involved and eventually destroy the monster/demon/god/whatever. That the case involved a group of kids performing a musical based on the Supernatural books was the meta touch this episode needed.


I think, in the end, this is what made this episode work. Instead of going all fireworks, bells-and-whistles, major plot twists, etc., etc., they returned to their bread-and-butter, the basis for the show--Sam and Dean battling monsters. It would have been fun to see the other regulars, too, but they would really have cluttered everything up. It struck the right notes--true to the story and the characters but a little bit more fun with winks and nods towards the fans along the way.


So, I dug it. Just FYI.

Finally, the muse speaks . . .

An idea for a story occurred to me yesterday.


This is the first time in a long time I've had an idea for a story. My ideas are usually novels, or at least novellas. Or TV shows. Or feature films. Never anything shorter.


But this will be a short story, one that will start out looking like one thing but winding up as something else. If I do it right.


I'm still thinking it through, so revealing too many details would be kind of pointless right now, but it'll be heavy on the metaphor and allegory, I'm thinking.


Part of the inspiration came from reading this lovely book.  I recommend you click that link and get this one for yourself. While there really wasn't all that much in it that I didn't know already, it sort of articulated a lot of concepts that I've had floating around in my mind for a while.


It also helped me come up with a new way to generate ideas, and that is, coming up with a symbol or a metaphor that can be used to build a story around. I know a lot of writers use this but it had never occurred to me to use it myself before.


My idea for this thing is a failed rebirth. You see stories where a character emerges from water--rain, a fountain, a river, whatever--which marks an important point in the story where the character is reborn. It's like a baptism.


But what if you come out of the other side of being reborn as stillborn? What if you don't survive the journey?


That's what I'm going to construct this little story around. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to get it published, even if I don't manage to screw it up--stories like this don't have much of a market these days. I'm mostly doing this for myself, I guess. I'll have it in my back pocket in case I should get asked to provide something for an appropriate venue for this sort of thing.


And I'll still have this idea generating thing, too, that I'm sure I can use for years to come.