Teppy, I was thinking about a rather subtle theme: memory. Not in the "I remember" sense, but using memory as a sixth sense: how a smell evokes a memory, or a song, or just a flash of deja vu.

Not so much the memory, but the how and why the memory is evoked. Am I making sense?

Yes, ma'am, and I like it!

How Proust's pastry burst on his taste buds and pulled him into a spiral of memory.

The smell of wet dirt bringing back memories of the basement of my house in Pennsylvania

Exactly. I have a drabble for this one already written - the trigger, the memory, the reaction.

BTW, while this is especially for Susan and any other romance writers out there? Have a look.

[link]

Scroll down to the contest at the bottom of the page.

I started a story about my two table people...we'll see if it turns into anything.I'm so not project-monogamous right now...I'm not even sure what's the relationship and which the goomare.(Sorry...the H:LOTS refs were annoying, but they were in English, for fuck's sake, right? It's a Sopranos thing.Goomare=mistress. Like Irina who made my favorite ever malaproprism evah "like a knight in white satin armor." I used to have a Spike site as my goomare-board...but I don't count the treehouse or lj cause your goomare's never supposed to meet your wife.

I'm up to almost 500 words on the story that's growing out of the place drabble.

If anyone wants to read the wip and comment, let me know. Profile addy's good.

I've noticed that my two pieces are very structured, almost like sonnets. This will be interesting, to see if the form continues.

What's very nice about this concept is that it keeps my muse from getting flabby while being stubborn about working on the mega-fics. If nothing else, it kind be an "ooh, shiny!" distraction until she gets her mind back on her work.

Interesting, I'm subscribing to my writer self a whole set of independent feelings and motivations.

Feeling a little possessed are we?

No we're not.

Stop that. Noone's talking to you.

You're just afraid they'll think I'm prettier than you.

Are NOT!!

I always do. But then I think there is a bitter Jewish man living somewhere inside me, so take it for what it's worth.

Heck, erika, not only do I have other people in my head, they've got names. There's Martha, the Old Woman Who Hates Me, a cold, bitter crone of a woman in a long black dress with narrow white cuff and collar. She has a large purse on her lap, and she sits dead upright in a rocking chair. She does not rock. She's too busy glaring at me, reminding me of my essential worthlessness and how I've betrayed everything I've been raised to believe.

Fortunately, on the other side of the room is Otho, her brother, who's leaning back on a bench with a feed cap pulled down over his eyes. He's chewing on a plug of tobacco, and he has passable aim on the spittoon. He likes dirty jokes and has a cackle that would curl hair. His favorite game in all the world is sneering at Martha.

Then there is the Puritan Council, several very prim men who make rulings on all my actions and whisper among themselves on doubtful matters. They are, fortunately, amenable to negotiation, and I believe I've caught more than one of them smiling very faintly. This is a very recent development, one that gives me hope.

Why don't I toss Martha out into a snowbank? Because she only stays in that rocking chair when I'm watching her. If I turn my back, she'll be gone, slithering into more hidden corners and conspiring with that large, furry thing with the dark claws. The thing with the furry creature, though, is that it is on no one's side. It terrifies me when it gets close enough to the light that I can pick out the claws and teeth and the glittering eyes. It has no soul, and it would dearly like to curl up at my feet and watch as I decide civilization is not nearly what it's cracked up to be.

Maybe I'll move this to my LJ later. Psychological purse-cleaning is not necessarily a spectator sport.