I find that stories come to me in pieces. Sadly, the pieces rarely belong to the same puzzle. For example, I’ve been gearing up to finish this short story which is entirely sci fi and scenes from a fantasy novel are flowing through my head. Not just one novel or even one world. To go one step further, I’m fairly certain that one of the scenes does not take place in the first book and another involves a character from a different set of stories in my head. All of this is good news. It is a reminder that the tank is not empty. It just needs to be cleaned out so it can fill properly.
I used to do this thing called The Idea Archive. In it I would create and post a ton of random ideas for the shadowrun role playing game that I hoped people would use and bring into their own games. I made a lot of NPCs on the archive. I often wonder if I dumped out all of my ideas in that space to the point where it took me a long time to fill back up.
No, this is not that. No, I think it is an important thing for individual writers to do, and I should start it up again for myself. I could use a notebook’s worth of ideas. Heck I have a good 30 of them right now and I still have not cracked a single one open. So, yeah, that needs to happen too. Brainstorms matter. when you sift through the wreckage of the thing you may find some really good ideas in there.
Some Thoughts:
- Audio books are killing reading for me. I just don’t want to do it anymore.