I follow every idea I get. Sometimes it leads me to the end of a very bad paragraph, but it's never a waste of time, in my head.

Heh. Allyson, nope, I don't think any idea is ever a waste of time. But I've been doing this for so long now that I've learned to sense, usually, what's going to eat a chunk of time and slim energy reserves and then peter out, because it just isn't where I'd go as a writer, or do well.

So, with those, I extract the bits that ping me hardest, and try to use them. The rest, I salute and send on their way.

I don't think I've definitively ruled out any of my ideas, but some of them are so deeply back-burnered I won't be surprised if they've lost their lustre (luster?) by the time I get to them. I'm very much afraid I've permanently outgrown that epic fantasy I was writing at 24, which is too bad, because I'm still fond of the characters and the worldbuilding, just not the plot and the too-obvious resemblance of the hero to the guy I had a crush on way back then. Just before I met Dylan. But I really want to get to that time-travel baseball novel eventually, because I feel like I could adore it almost as much as I do the WIP, even though it'd take a whole different voice and style than the niche I'm currently carving myself.

Oh, I've had some really, really bad ideas. In the right hands and head, they could be good ideas, I'm sure.

I don't follow up every story idea I have, at all. But I have found that I don't throw them away -- if I've scribbled something on a piece of paper, it sometimes changes into something else, later, and I see that it needed more plot, different characters, what have you. Still, I have a file full of ideas that I've never tested -- a lot of historical stories, some children's stuff, some nonfiction essays. Right now, as Deb said, they're not going to work no matter how much I loved them when they bloomed. It's nice to keep them in a little pile, though, and revist them once in a while.

The biggest problem I find I have is not so much with unsuitable ideas, as with ideas who've lost their tooth. A few unfinished novels that got stuck on hiatus for whatever reason, circs within or beyond my control. They'll probably never get written now. A pity - not bad, any of them.

Back to work on Cruel Sister.

edit: 1000 words. A nice slow grind.

Feh.

I've decided to show off the bunny that had me spun out... It's a romantic comedy about a writer who got mildly famous for writing something stupid, some kind of Carrie Bradshaw thing, but in the intervening years she gets in an accident. It's not all bad because her writing is much better than it used to be, but now people don't want it...they think it's too dark. But then she meets a once-hot writer guy at some event that's supposed to come up with a book, but he's busy...chasing women or something so he's got nothing. So she uses him as, like, her book's public face, right? He's the one that hits the road with it, and people love it from him because he looks so sensitive and insightful about women, and probably they fight about that and hook up in the end. Not my usual turf, exactly, is it?

The nervous writer waited as her mentor scanned the pages she’d brought. “I...have more. I thought I’d just bring the first few chapters...save wear on the printer, you know?”

“Of course... these are fine,” Max said, stroking his beard in that way it seemed all men with facial hair did. “Better than fine...they’re fucking brilliant. Clever, insightful, even sexy, you naughty girl. You can say you’ve been getting rehabbed in there, but we all know the truth don’t we?”

Carla cracked a smile. “It wasn’t all from life.”

“Well, it was lively enough.”

Carla felt a breath she hadn’t known she was holding leave her chest. Thank God, some light at the end of the Ramen tunnel. All the sacrifices, the struggle, it was all gonna be worth it.She felt a few traitorous tears well up. Since her travel writing accident and the broken back, she was all too emotional, but she was just so grateful, with all she lost, that she got her mojo back at the desk. If that hadn’t happened she wouldn’t have been sure if she’d wanted to go on living. She’d written something almost every daysince she was six.

“It’s too bad,” Max said
. ”What’s too bad?” she asked. “Not the writing. Chapter three is especially, and I’m quoting my friend here, but it’s ‘the shit.’ You know it is.”

“Excrement or not,” Max said, but his voice softened, “It’s not the sort of writing people want from the author of “Red Hot San Francisco.”

“That was five years ago,” she pointed out. “And I’m not the same woman.”

“Yes, I know. It inspires me the way you’ve picked yourself up after...everything.”
It’s a wheelchair, Max. You can say it. And I write better now, too.

“But...”

”It’s a downer, Carla, pet. Wheelchair sexcapades just don’t sell.”

“But it’s my life, Max. Write what you know, you know? And I don’t get it...why is it inspiring for me to put my skirt on right, but not for me to keep doing something I’ve done my whole life?”

“ Surely the disability press...”

‘Hardly ever can pay me anything. I made $15 last month. Sure, I’m making it barely, but I owe people, and my printer’s about to go the way of a stone tablet...”

“ I think it’s great,” he said again. “It’s the business I don’t trust. They got to know you a certain way, and now you go and spring depth on them...it’s bound to be a shock.”

“ I still have the panties, Max.” The piece that had made her reputation, a love letter to a red thong, was one her friends had loyally credited with starting the major thong fad in the mid-nineties.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but have you considered fetish sites?”

”No...well, yes. I’m waiting on an e-mail from one now.”
Fetish sites. Christ.

“ Are you still planning to come to my group tonight? They’re really excited about meeting someone published.”

”Ah, Max. You always know what to say. They’re probably just shocked I’m not dead or drooling in a cup.” Carla wheeled herself to the window and admired Max’s view.

“Not at all.”

“You flush when you lie, Max.”

“Okay, maybe for the first five minutes. But you can make them all forget that. I know you can.”

“As long as I don’t try to sell my (continued...)

( continues...) memoirs.”

“Exactly.”

“I knew it.”

“That wasn’t fair. You’d trapped me and you know it.”

”Shocked you into honesty, you mean.” .

erika, that's great! I'd love to see what you do with this.

I'm back to fairy tales. They're much more comforting than real life.

~Currency~

Forbearance was her only currency. For every demand, every rebuke, every snarled, chiding word, she offered another piece of it. Standing straight, chin up, eyes wide, she dug down deep, chipping away at the solid bulk of it, offering it up to her stepmother and the vicious girls she was made to call sisters.

No one would beggar her in her own home. She paid a price each day, ears ringing with their screeches, the back of her thighs burning beneath the willow switch. Each moment she withstood, she imagined the comforting weight of a gold florin, given in silence.

Actually, AmyLiz, like most stuff I write about, there is a kernel of my life in it. Just one of my more girly kernels. And I have a writer friend who thinks I am lucky in how much time I have to do my stuff. (It'll feel weird not to kill somebody though.)