Writing News
I am one of those annoying “That’s probably not going to work and here are 53 reasons why” kind of people. The Hunky Hubby is one of those “That’s Awesome, let’s plan to do it next week and see what happens” kind of guys. And so he has great ideas and I give him a list of obstacles to overcome in order to get the ideas accomplished. We go a little crazy but really it does work pretty well.
But sometimes I just kick myself for not realizing the brilliance of an idea, for just seeing the difficulties and not the reasons it is important. Too many of these to count with The Hunky Hubby. But recently in writing I was once again frusterated by my innate suspicion of good ideas. Almost four years ago I pitched one of my manuscripts at a writing conference for the first time. I was nervous and everyone said no. But one of the editors said that he would have been interested if my story had a modern tie-in. Something to take a modern teen and wisk them away into the world of Ancient Assyria.
I of course stared at him and went “duh”. I thought on it for a bit but couldn’t think of a way to make it work, was not inspired and so I dropped it. Fast forward three years and ten months and I have this brilliant idea for my story….what if I wrote a modern tie-in! Hmmm, sounds familiar. Anyway, I was supposed to be finishing up my snowflake outline thingy for FTC this week. But instead I have been snowflaking/outlining out a short story about a modern Assyrian girl who lives in Chicago and loses her baby brother at the airport and is mistaken for a terrorist and stuff. I’m going to make the short story with a complete story arch, just as though it were supposed to go into a collection. Then I’ll split it into 4 parts and put it into my Ancient Assyria story to provide a way for the modern teen girl to get whisked away into my story! Too bad the idea wasn’t
