Ideas

I lead a fairly boring life; Hubby and I are both introverts (INTJs, specifically – yes, both of us) and are perfectly content so spend our off time at our computers. He’s frequently playing a videogame (sometimes with out-of-state friends) , and I’m frequently writing or reading.

Lately – read: pretty much since I posted the last of “Child of Iron, Goblet of Fire,” the writing hasn’t been there, so I’ve been binge-reading fanfiction. Unfortunately, some of my favorite authors are now writing in fandoms I have zero (or, sometimes, less than zero) interest in. Some of my other favorite authors aren’t writing much new fanfiction.

So these blog posts become … well, challenging to write, at least in a way that might engage a reader. I have no updates on the writing (though I have gotten a few hundred words on “A Messiah on Re-Entry” this last week – yay, me!) outside of what I’ve posted (“Siblings and Cousins,” which title I hate but nothing else came to mind) already.

Oh, I’ve made a few starts – another Eureka/MCU crossover (that, on reflection, could follow S&C), a Eureka/SG-1 crossover, and of course the other starts I’ve either spoken of or posted (Ladies Who Spy; Gypsy Legacy; the Arrow/Iron Fist crossover; the Arrow/NCIS crossover). None of these are really calling to me at the moment, and since I’m not trying to make a career of this, I’m letting my subconscious/Muse lie fallow for a while.

Which means that I (feel like I) have even less to write about now than usually.

So – today’s entry is all about choosing stories, or stories choosing you, as the case may be. In other words, what makes an idea a story that I want to and, more importantly, can write?

Let’s start by saying that ideas are everywhere. A news headline, an overheard snippet of conversation, a fleeting “what would happen if…” thought. Any and all of those can be ideas. So can watching or reading a story and thinking, “I could do that so much better.”

Most writers have many ideas every day, and they toss almost all of those ideas aside without much consideration because they’re not “right” for them at that time, if ever.

Those that are “right” get more consideration, and even then some of them are set aside.

I’ll offer an example from my own thought processes.

First, many years ago, I’d been reading some erotic romance and the Percy Jackson series at about the same time. That gave me the idea, “What if a woman bought a dildo and that dildo was actually Pan’s penis – he irked a goddess and she lopped it off?”

Now, that’s a fun idea – especially if you add in a bit of a fairy-tale/soulmate thing, wherein the only woman who’ll actually see the dildo is Pan’s true mate – and Pan himself never saw who took his penis/dildo.

Great fun … only not for me to write. Around the time I had that idea, and even wrote an opening scene or two, I realized I was just done with erotica in general. Why? Because almost no author actually writes erotic scenes well. Erotic scenes are still scenes and therefore need to function as a scene. Very few authors actually accomplish this. (I’m told Laurell K. Hamilton does in her Merry Gentry series, but I haven’t read them, so can neither confirm nor deny.)

Effectively, I started skimming past any erotic scene I came across while reading and more or less quit writing any – certainly I don’t write them of any length and I generally only include description necessary to the rest of the story. (I had one beta reader tell me once that she couldn’t skip my sex scenes – because they’re still scenes that advance the story.)

Therefore

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, I’m not the person to write the story of Pan and his amputated penis/dildo. I might have been had the idea occurred to me sooner, but it didn’t, so I’m not. I do hope someone writes it, sometime, because I think it could be a blast to read.

It’s much easier to describe what’s not a me-story than what is: I’m not interested in vampires or werewolves (really any shapeshifters), for example, so it’s not likely I’ll ever write a story featuring either of those as main/major characters. Most dystopian fiction leaves me cold, as do most anti-heroes, so there are whole genres (sub-genres) I’ll probably never write.

The challenge comes when an idea falls into the me-story category, but then I can’t figure out how to write it. There’s one I’m letting simmer on the back burners of my mind that’s a Stargate: Atlantis riff/homage … derivative? (GRIN) I have a rough idea of the opening of the story, but I’m stuck figuring out how to make the physics work.

Of course, my Creative Voice/Muse says, “Write it anyway! We’ll make it work!” And I hope that’s the case. For now, though, I’m letting the idea simmer, hoping that something will bubble over and my Conscious Mind will say, “Yes! That’s what I’ve been looking for! Let’s write!”

For now, though, that SGA riff is a “not right now” story for me.

And sometimes, it’s not so much that I read a story and think, “I could do that better,” as I read it and think, “Well, there are ways to write that and add more tension and conflict.”

As much as I love it, Jilly James’ “If Found, Please Return” falls into that last category for me. Once Tony finds out about the Stargate program, there’s absolutely no reason for him to stay with NCIS – that part of the story conflict kind of dies on the vine. And when I was reading it the second (or maybe third) time, I thought, “Hey, y’know what would be a massive conflict for Tony? A vigilante!”

And thus was born “Thicker than Water,” which has about 25,000 words so far, and which I think I’ll get back to finishing eventually. The main reason I haven’t finished it yet is that both NCIS and the Arrowverse ticked me off so much that I lost a lot of my interest in writing in those universes. I think I’m far enough past the annoyance that I can go back and finish that story. Maybe; it really depends on how much of each series I need to re-watch. Or if I just say, “Screw it, the story’s already AU, what’s a juggling of continuity here and there?” GRIN

For now, though – I’d planned to spend the day doing some minor housework, but I woke up with a sinus headache and would much rather read or write. Off to do one or the other. Or maybe both, depending on how the headache goes.