I moved back to Utah today. Got about two hours of sleep before leaving for the airport at 4:30 (I tried, but I couldn’t help it! I couldn’t sleep!), then basically slept, listened to podcasts, and talked with this lady from Tennessee all the way to SLC. Then, busy busy busy busy busy…holy cow! I’m pooped.
But I did get some writing in while I was in the airplane. And, surprise, surprise, it wasn’t on my novel. You see, last night, while I was writing on the novel, I had this idea for a story flash into my mind. It could make for a very good short story. I decided today to run with it.
The idea is this: what if there was a guy who could tell who was and wasn’t going to hell? And if this same person could give people a vision of hell? What would happen? How would individuals and society react to him? Would they accept him or reject him? And what if he wasn’t even a religious guy? Just because he knows about hell doesn’t mean that he knows anything about everything else. He could deduce some presuppositions to the existence of hell, but logic doesn’t translate into faith. What basically would be his story?
I started today by basically brainfarting on the subject. I put it in the first person and just started writing anything that the idea brought to mind. When I realized that I had to describe what hell looked like, it became a little bit tougher (and I’ll probably edit that section a lot), but mostly it just flowed out. However, the stuff that’s flowing out of my mind is DEFINITELY not anywhere close to a finished product. It doesn’t have a whole lot of structure, and where it does, it’s too lengthy. I’ll definitely have to cut it down. But that comes later. I figure it’s better to get it out now.
This is a lot different than Decision LZ150207 that I wrote a while ago. That story basically sprouted from my head fully formed. I’ve since edited the beginning quite a bit, and some of the descriptions, but the basic story hasn’t changed.
Also with Decision LZ150207, I had a great idea that I didn’t act on for a long time. It just sat in my brain and played itself over and over again until its demands to be written were greater than all of the other demands on my time. It was probably some of the least painful writing I’ve done, but that idea had a lot of time to die. It surprised me that it stayed alive.
What I’m wondering is this: if, in a flash of the mind, you get this idea that you think is really good for a story, is it better to focus on that idea right away, to at least start the story before the idea fades and is forgotten, or is it better to wait and not write until something just comes to you?
So…Freaking…Tired…my knee jerk reaction is to say that you should run with what you’ve got. And that’s why work on the novel is going to take the backseat until I figure out if the idea works or not.
So…tired…night!
