Floundering Through Life...

...down at the Ozdust, if only because dust is what we come too! Nothing matters, but knowing nothing matters…it’s just life…keep on floundering through…

Name that musical. Ha!

Anyway, I’ve been floundering for a few weeks. Penelope (who you might remember was choking Jag inside my head) has decided that she doesn’t want to find the body I had so carefully planned for her to find. (I hope you read that with a heavy dose of sarcasm on the “carefully planned” part. I mean, did you read yesterday's post? *snarf*)

Jag is still mildly—okay majorly—peeved about the whole interview thing. He can pout a bit if he doesn’t get his way. I keep trying to coax him out the way you do a small animal with a chunk of cheese or something. He’s not having any of it. I guess he won’t eat anything he can find. *shrugs*

Anyway, so I’ve been floundering, trying to come up with something else writerly to do. And little things keep flashing up, but nothing substantial enough to yanno, actually seize on and run with.

For example, I’ve had a couple of titles come up that I thought would be cool. I was listening to “Mad World” by Adam Lambert and the words “no tomorrow” came up. I was in the car, singing along at the top of my lungs like I usually do. I thought, “Wow! ‘No Tomorrow’ would be a totally cool title for a book.” I promptly stopped singing (you would’ve been happy. I am not what you would call the next American Idol) and started pondering what the book would be about.

Uh….

Suicide? Someone who dies all the time? There has to be a “No Tomorrow” moment, right? And death and dying and committing suicide are a little dark for me. *flounder, flounder*

So I discarded that. Moved on to my favorite movie of all time—Groundhog Day. I thought, “Hmm, maybe my MC could live the same day over and over.” But why? *flop* What would be the conflict? *flip* Maybe it could be “Groundhog Day meets…???” *flounder flounder flounder*

That wasn’t working out, so I moved on. I thought maybe I could yanno, actually try writing a science fiction novel that included science. See, I’ve written two SF novels, but they’re what I call “soft sci fi” which means I don’t actually have to know any science to write them. They’re dystopian novels. One of them does have some wicked cool gadgets, but the other one is like a genetic thing that has evolved in people. Anyway, I began contemplating maybe making “No Tomorrow” a harder science fiction novel.

Let the floundering begin! Again.

I thought and thought. Stewed. Floundered. Chatted. Checked email at least fifty billion times. Read five books (one of which can hardly be called a book it was so bad). Watched Survivor re-runs. A movie made in the 80s. (I like disco, but come on. Who picked that music and thought it sounded good?) Almost finished another school year (freedom this Friday, baby!).

And nothing.

I thought maybe it could be like a kid’s experiences in a holodeck or something. You know, Groundhog Day meets Star Trek. But I couldn’t think of a reason to have him there, and I really don’t want to write about space and space ships. That’s just not my thang. And I was back to the lame Groundhog Day idea.

So I scratched that and went back to wallowing in the stewage pot. I thought of a few more dumb things, and then finally I thought, “What if time started going backward? So that there was ‘No Tomorrow’?”

That could be kewl. But why would time suddenly start moving backward? Would the characters get older or younger? What challenges would I have to face with a protag who’s getting younger and younger? Do they have to re-live their yesterdays? Or are the days just going backward? If so, that wouldn’t really be “No Tomorrow” it would just be “A Different Tomorrow”. What would the conflict be? Fixing time? How much science do I really need to know and how much can I make up? Is this time travel? *panic face*

*flounder flounder flounder flounder flounder*

So what have you been working on?