Brainstorming

You know what I find interesting? How our mind works. I'll take myself for example. Right now I'm tired, extremely tired, despite going to bed early I'm still on the precipice of being asleep. If I slow down for too long, say to watch TV or something, I'll be asleep in under ten minutes. Which of course means I'll have to keep moving. But, what is interesting is that despite the strong urge to close my eyes and go to sleep, I'm still thinking about a possible story.

Here's the situation. I learned of a writing contest that, if I was to win, the grand prize is $3,000 dollars plus a trip to New York for me and one other to meet with Agents, Editors and a Publisher. The entry is due in May and honestly I would love to win the grand prize. I have until May 15th to submit a short story that is 4,000 words long. That is the hard part. I have several possible ideas that could work. A serial killer confessional, Siam, I could even do a short story about Alex or maybe even Genie.....actually that's a really good idea.....Okay, a really good idea. I'd have to chew on it for awhile.

The problem however is this: How do I make it only 4,000 words and be interesting? This may not seem like a problem to most people, but I'm a slow and gradual kind of writer. I like to bring things out in time, pace the story so a short story feels, well, short. Of the four ideas, only three of them are actually viable for a short story. My serial killer piece, I'll be honest, the main character killed 19 people and you can't really confess to all 19 people in just 4,000 words. It's just not possible so realistically, unless I have the character only confess to the first one and leave the judges wanting more, then maybe. In reality though the Judges probably aren't going to care. A story is suppose to have a beginning, a middle and an end. If you leave them wanting more, clearly you don't have an end.

With Alex and Genie, well they are easy simply because I can do something from their life earlier than the story that I'm writing for them. Genie is CIA, I'm positive I could come up with some kind of mission gone wrong that can finish in 4,000 words.......okay, probably 8,000 words, but I'm flexible. I'm sure I can figure something out. If I do Alex then at least I can give her a try with readers that aren't friends or related to me. There is a sort of bias when it comes to friends and family after all that just can't be ignored....no matter how much you wish you could.

Siam is designed to be several short stories combined with one long story. Think of it like this: Chapter 1 is of course an introduction to Siam and the other people along for the ride. You find out what she looks like, how she acts...her strange sense of humor and that something isn't exactly right about her. Normal just doesn't apply. The second Chapter is in her point of view, she basically is talking to the reader while telling about this one job that she did. The hard part for Siam is that I have to step in and out of her skull throughout the whole story. For a short...which I might have one already accomplished now I think about it.....it would be of course from Siam's perspective, talking about a client. The problem is that I don't think it's 4,000 words, I think it's more.

I suppose I could do Nyx. If anyone is the easiest to write for it's Nyx, but she has a nasty habit of picking me up and running me where she wants to go which will take as long as it takes thank you very much.

There's one other possibility I suppose, an idea that has teased me off and on for the last few years. It's about my favorite theoretical subject, multiple realities. Here's the picture: A woman is walking into her kitchen to get some food for her children. She takes one step, two steps then bam, pain and she's out like a light. When she wakes up she's in the body of one of her duplicates within another reality. I know all the answers about how, why, what, when, where and who of course, but again, my problem with it being too long. I seem to be missing three separate genes in my body. The first one is the knack of drawing on paper, I just don't have it. The second seems to be the morning person gene. I am not happy with waking up early, I have a hard day the whole day if I do. Bad enough my daughter wakes me at 8:00 AM every morning, but when I have to wake up at about 6:30 just to get ready to go to the gym....I get cranky. The third gene is the kicker, it's the one that allows me to think up short stories instead of longer ones.

Anyway, who wants to read a 4,000 word story? What can you do with that? Not very much, unfortunately, you have time for one twist and that's it. Sadly I think that's a little boring, so what do I do? The answer is simple, I have until the middle of February to come up with an idea I like that could work then I have until May to write and edit the bloody thing. Plus I have school on top of that.............

I think I should have named this entry as Brainstorming and Whining. It seems half of this is just that, one or the other. The reason I'm brainstorming here instead of with my husband is because this week he's in Florida and next week he'll be in Arkansas, leaving me without a partner in the fiasco. The problem is that Ike and I think about things very differently, which is why it's easier to bounce ideas off of him since he looks at it in a completely different way than I may. This tells me one thing for certain.....I need to find more people that think like he does so that when he's away I'll have someone else to bounce my ideas off of.

Incidentally, if anyone thinks one of my ideas would be better than another, please let me know. The more input the better.