{"id":106894700,"date":"2023-03-08T13:31:06","date_gmt":"2023-03-08T13:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=106894700"},"modified":"2025-08-04T10:46:05","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T15:46:05","slug":"i-had-an-idea-for-a-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=106894700","title":{"rendered":"I Had An Idea For A Story"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
“I got ideas, man! I got ideas! Like, how bout a shirt that says, I don’t know, LOSER. Or a hat! A f–kin hat that goes BEEOOOOWWWEEEET!” – Lance Brumder, ‘Orange County’ (2002)<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Do you ever feel like you can\u2019t write fast enough to keep up with your thoughts? All the time this happens to me. I can see the novel\/story\/poem\/blog post in my head so clearly. If only I wasn\u2019t subject to the limits of this cursed human body, my slow hands and illegible handwriting (aka numerous typos). Nay, if only I was not subject to even the laws of physics, the speed at which light can travel, the ink refracting back onto my optical nerves! I would have so many novels if not for these oppressive physical limitations!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s another story of pure mania: I re-read Hitchhiker\u2019s Guide To The Galaxy<\/em> earlier this year. I was also working on some speculative stories. Not my usual lane\u2014I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll ever write really hard sci-fi\u2014but I was thinking about things and tossing around premises for stories. Andor <\/em>was probably on my mind, too, because when is it not? I got to thinking about how Hitchhiker\u2019s Guide<\/em> references other works (Vogon poetry, lesser galactic encyclopedias, etc) and I think I had recently read some Jorge Luis Borges, and then I was thinking how Star Wars<\/em> has become this main narrative with a million satellite narratives around that, and how cool is that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I thought up a book idea. And another. And another. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reader, I had an idea for a whole sci-fi series of 10 books. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"File:ESO<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Here was the proposal: a 5-book main narrative, involving these two guys with Occupations To Be Named Later who start out as best friends but betray each other and their children have to live with the fallout. Godfather II<\/em>-style generation jumping, Shakespearian flaws and shit. In space. BUT THEN the other five books would be fleshing out the universe\u2014one book would be a human writer\u2019s study of an alien race\u2019s epic poetry, which would serve as an excuse for me to rewrite Beowulf<\/em> but with aliens. One book would be like a field guide to a different planet and its inhabitants\/flora\/fauna. One book would be a short story collection all set on one planet, tangentially involving characters from the main narrative, etc etc etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"File:Aerial<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I should say this was a Friday afternoon. Week over. Mal and I had a big night of eating chicken wings on the couch and watching movies planned. Saturday was going be a day I could sit at my computer and write uninterrupted for hours. That\u2019s a real creative sweet spot for me. It\u2019s a time of pure Good Vibes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And my brain was running wild<\/em> with \u201cWRITE A 10-BOOK SCI-FI SERIES!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right away, I knew I wasn\u2019t going to do this. My genres are horror, magical realism, fairy tales, and Chicago. Even the most charitable math\u2014let\u2019s say two years for every book, draft-to-publication\u2014that\u2019s 20 years of my life<\/em>. I\u2019m already 35. It\u2019s not happening without some sort of head-in-a-vat technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After struggling with the push-pull of \u201cthis is impossible\u201d and \u201cbut what if we try<\/em>\u201d for like half an hour, I eventually decided to sit back and enjoy my brain like this. I get manic, I get carried away with ideas\u2014write one song and I start thinking about the album, you know? Rather than be sad that my strange, no-one-asked-for-this vision would never be realized, I sat and marinated with all those ideas, and figured one or two of them could at least make pretty good short stories (one of the novels I still want to write, standalone). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Teenage<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The point of this story, which a healthy sense of shame would probably stop me from telling you, is that ideas are cheap. Ideas are easy. Ideas are certainly fun<\/em>, but so is eating a shrimp basket while staring at the ocean and thinking, \u201cone day I\u2019ll learn to surf.\u201d What\u2019s not<\/em> fun is waking up at 6 a.m., paddling out into 10-foot swells, and getting pummeled by Poseidon because that one kid in Point Break<\/em> was onto something when he derisively told 25-year-old Johnny Utah \u201cplenty of people your age learn to surf.\u201d Watch for yourself. Nothing in this scene looks fun unless you have a \u201cLori Petty step on my neck\u201d fetish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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