When I was young and single there would be no attractive women until I started dating someone, at which point they would all swarm out of their nests and abound all of a sudden, which tended to lead to the complications a sensible person would expect but which always took me by surprise.
It’s like that now with ideas for novels. I had ideas for five novels, some which I’ve been putting off for a long time, some new. They kept coming. I would try to write a short story, and it would insist on being a novel. Could be I subconsciously realize the ideas suck, because while I tend to finish short stories, the novels, eh, you know. To circumvent this tendency to procrastinate, I did the one thing again and even devised the Metamorphosism Challenge to kill two with one stone.
Yesterday it happened again. I tried to write a short story but it says a few thousand words are not enough. The longer I think about it, the wickeder it seems. It seems, this morning, like a wicked, wicked, wicked idea for a novel. I’ve misled myself on this before of course. I wonder if this is some pretentious self-delusional thing I have going here, you know, brilliant sufficient yet unwritten novels.
What do you think? Here’s a short excerpt of yesterday’s story.
DQI 1999
by Mig
Professor K. introduced me to the rest of the staff. “This is Greg,” he said. “He has no human feelings.”
The McGill Pain Questionnaire was one of the first tests we’d covered in class. What it basically does is, it takes a subjective experience — pain — and quantifies it. It uses three main kinds of pain descriptors
Since reading the excerpt- about an hour ago- I find myself wondering what on earth is that suit for ? Why would anyone volunteer to test it ? And that it should have a ‘natural childbirth’ mode, with every student OB/GYN having to put it on as part of their education.
It certainly has me curious-
I’d kinda like to read the rest of that. Any chance?
Sue – the suit is, initially, designed to inflict every kind of pain at closely-controlled intensities. No one volunteers to test it – they pay to learn what their maximum pain threshhold is.
Great idea with the labor, BTW:
Sounds like a really creepy idea. Maybe you should just write a bunch of short stories…?
If they all center around the same person(s), Tadaah, you have a novel….
creepy = great… I’m a bit tired and whoozy from the anti-flu medicine… :-|
Good idea with the short stories. If I end up with enough for a novel, I could call them chapters…
I want to see it illustrated. It’s good graphic novel material – esp. the narrative timing.
Also? Every well-promoted First Novel includes notes of adulation, on the jacket, for the previously published book of short stories. The second-best-promoted ones talk about the short story competitions that the author won prior to publication.
I missed the Zoetrope Story deadline, while freaking out about my cat. Merde.