So earlier this week I was thinking, man, I am a Writing-Idea Machine. I have so much to write about. So many ideas. I came up with this crazy plot to participate in NaNoWriMo every year for the rest of my life, because I obviously have 65 books inside of me just waiting to get out. No problem. Right?
So then of course I spend all morning trying to figure out what to blog about.
Face, meet palm.
Anyways, then I thought, I should tell you about some of the crazy crap I used to write about when I was a kid. Cause I wrote a lot back then, too.
1.) Cute Cartoon Bunnies Get Stabbed. I have no idea where this one came from. I made little picture books in spiral bound notebooks, and I had these two recurring rabbit characters named Billy and Mookie. They actually lived in a pretty clever little house filled with cute monsters that provided most of their “technology”. For example, they had a little monster that sat on their windowsill and held up a screen to block out the sun, and when they wanted to open the window they’d pull on his tail and he’d set the screen down.
So obviously one of the picture books involved one bunny coming home to find the other bunny laying on the floor with a dagger in his heart.
Yeah I dunno where I was going with that one.
2.) Cute Cartoon Bunnies Go to Jail: Another time they went to jail. They were innocent, but I guess the justice system in their world isn’t exactly all its cracked up to be.
3.) “The Friendly Candidates”: Back in the days of Clinton/Bush/Perot the TV was nothing but an endless stream of smear tactics. Leave it to me to write a book where U.S. presidential candidates actually liked each other and gave each other encouragement. Ahh, cute lil’ optimistic me.
4.) “Gerbil Adventures”: Gerbils go on crazy adventures throughout the house. These stories actually weren’t too bad.
5.) “My Life”: When I was about eight or ten years old I wrote a fictional autobiography for school. Apparently when I was 8 I thought I was going to grow up to be a vet and also have like, 10 kids. (Mostly because I had fun giving them all interesting names.)
6.) Thomas the Tank Engine Fan Fiction: Yup.
7.) Anthropomorphic Toys: Guys, you have no idea how much I wrote about my toys. See, I managed to convince myself that my toys would come to life when I left the room, Toy Story style (although this was years before Toy Story… I blame the Muppets’ “The Christmas Toy”.) So I gave them all sorts of adventures. First in short stories, and later in two full length novels. Did I mention that I was like… 18 by that point? Who me, Peter Pan?
(If you are, for some bizarre reason, interested in hearing more about said novels, I once rambled about them rather in depth over at my LJ.)
8.) The Tortoise Wins the Race, the Hare Sues Because of Emotional Damage: When I was a freshman in high school one of our assignments was to re-write a fable or fairy tail in a satirical way. I redid the Tortoise and the Hare in a way that I still think was pretty clever, but NO ONE in my class “got it”. Stupid muggles.
9.) Ender’s Game Excerpts Rewritten With the Characters As Furries: I want to say Ender was a squirrel but I can’t remember. P.S. I’m in ur library, ruining ur sci-fi
10.) Yoshi’s Island Novelization: The best part was the super long prologue that went into hilarious unnecessary detail regarding Yoshi culture. (Was possibly influenced by the official “Gremlins” novelization, which went into hilarious unnecessary detail regarding Mogwai culture.)
…ya know, on second thought, maybe we should keep me far away from writing.
“Anthropomorphic Toys” – Winnie the Pooh style! 😀
As a kid, I had so many story ideas and literally none of them saw the light of day. I might have plotted, named things, written a chapter or two, and then given up and started a new website or God knows what. And don’t worry, I did Buffy fan fiction *shudder*.
The logical extrapolation of that is Happy Tree Friends.
*chuckles* A few of those ideas sound pretty good to me. =)
You should check out Spoony’s “Reasons I Shouldn’t Write Screenplays” I think you’d get a kick out of it.
Oh Pike, no no no. You pick up that pencil right now, young lady, and finish “The Friendly Candidates”. Talk about a best seller! I’d buy 3 or 4 of them and I know exactly who would get them.
Stay away from writing? Absolutely not. To paraphrase A. A. Milne, “More,” said her fans. “Of what?” asked Pike. “Everything,” said her fans.
DUDE, Muppets “The Christmas Toy” was so terrible and awesome and augh.
When Toy Story came out I totally thought it was a remake of the Christmas Toy
Different gears. I often can’t figure out what to blog about either, but I’m managing my fiction writing fine. I think it’s because my fiction is really just one idea being focused on for an extended period of time, whereas a blog is a different idea everytime you post (except for those times you do parts 2 and 3 for a series of posts).
As for not being allowed to write, I wrote horrible She-Ra and My Little Pony rip-offs as a kid. Not even fanfics. Just rip-offs. They didn’t make sense and they were bad. But if you love writing, keep doing it. I made my first professional sale earlier this year and the book anthology with my novelette will be available in all major booksellers next month. Nothing works like practice.
I’m not sure if you’re serious about getting published, I generally only hear you talking about your fiction writing in relation to NaNoWriMo, but if you have any questions you can e-mail me or send me a DM on Twitter. I was at a writer workshop recently taught by Tim Powers and KD Wentworth (and guests lecturers Jerry Pournelle, Kevin J Anderson, Rebecca Moesta, Eric Flint, and more–it was pretty pro!) and one of the things they emphasized was keep writing everyday, even if you’re sick, even if the lawn needs to be mowed, even if your friends want to go hang out. Treat it like a job, because if you want to go professional, it will be. It doesn’t mean that you have to give up everything, but you have to make a choice on how to budget your time.
Since the workshop, I don’t log into WoW, don’t play video games, don’t read books or comcs, until I have fulfilled my writing quota for the day. I’ll play after that, but I’m making sure my writing comes first. If I hang out with friends after work, I still get my 500 words for the day done before I go to bed, even if it’s 1am and I have to be up at 7am the next day. By my estimate I should finish the first draft my early March. A little each day all adds up!
Anyway, at risk of digressing… keep writing. If you love it, do it. If you want to do it seriously for eventual publication, you will want to be disciplined about it as well. NaNoWriMo is great for the comaraderie, but there’s no reason novel-writing has to be restricted to one month of the year. 🙂
Oh man, I wrote so many stories. Some fanfiction, some original possibilities.
Some things, like zombie kitty and zombie bunny and zombie teddy, got me sent to the guidance office…
@ Hana – you know, you are so right about writing every day… I’m just lazy. Haha.
Basically where I’m at is as follows: I don’t really have a goal of “being a writer”; it’s not something I really aspire to. That said, I write SO MUCH that I sort of figured, you know, I might as well try to publish something, just for the heck of it. My first thought was that it shouldn’t be too hard. Upon realizing that it was, indeed, very hard, it became more of a challenge. You know, like “everyone says it’s near impossible to be published. Well, I’ll show them!”
Which is why last year’s NaNo has been proofread and edited and rewritten into oblivion and I’ve been researching query letters and the like for some time now. I’m actually really close to a “finished version” but the last few months have been terrible for me in terms of motivation. My bad.
As for why I get stoked over NaNo, well, I won’t lie: the little word count graph on their website combined with peer pressure is basically the only way I can successfully motivate myself to “seriously write” anymore. Yeah, I’m the epitome of lazy.
By the way, I’m jealous of the Tim Powers thing…
“Ender’s Game Excerpts Rewritten With the Characters As Furries”
– You are now officially the coolest person on the face of the earth! I’ve wondering all day long what kinds of animals the other characters are 🙂
“The Friendly Candidates”
This actually inspired me to write an email to the congressman I’m going to vote for, asking him to cut his smear campaign ads against his opponent, and just promote himself instead, since mudslinging demeans a candidate’s character. Don’t know if he will listen, but if gets enough of that feedback, then maybe he will. Anyway, your blog has officially helped inspire political action!
“Thomas the Tank Engine Fan Fiction: Yup.”
OK, my entire guild just freaked out when I posted this (more or less) into gchat. You broke my guild, remotely.
Our GM suggested slashfic.
Yes, she is awesome and you cannot have her.