One of the best books on writing I have ever read was Cory Doctorow and Karl Schroder’s Complete Idiot’s Guide to Publishing Science Fiction. My favorite chapter is where they answer that age-old question, where do you get your ideas. Among their suggestions they speak of a “spark collider” in your mind.

Various pieces of data and ideas are sparks. Most cases, they aren’t big or deep enough to form the basis of a story. But like particles sent shooting down a particle collider, they collide and clump together in your head to form larger structures and thought-forms that become the foundations for your writing.

Well, my mind was a sparking this weekend. One of the sparks is related to a post I will make later today (itself the result of many “recent news” sparks). Part of it is on cold fusion. And a good deal is inspired by how amazing my girlfriend is.

Part of me wonders about documenting my story outlines on here. Of course, the issue of idea theft arises. I know I shouldn’t worry about, as I do believe in creative commons. But how does creative commons cover works in progress? Mind you, I am listening to Warren Ellis‘ Bad Signal, where he constantly documents bits and pieces of his work. In his last couple of posts he pretty much outlined a new take on Robin Hood he will make a run at. Left me salivating. Point is though that he has developed the idea in public, without worrying about being “ripped off”. Should I follow suit.

Also, last week I dug up Wormwood again, and kept going back to the fact that we had a good story in there, we just couldn’t agree how to navigate through it. Looking over it, I think the problem was we tried to make it to serious and logical. Lots of meaningful stares, and silent nods, and subtle things like that … all of which bogged the thing down and killed the original spirit of the thing. Which was a love song to spaghetti westerns, kung-fu, and zombie flicks. It was suppose to be a mad thing.

So I started writing it up again. And I am fighting the need to put in meaningful ideas and the such. We shall see how it goes. I will check with my collaborators to see if they would be interested in posting the work up here.